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Title: Sink or swim?
        a novel; vol. 1/3

Author: Mrs. Houstoun

Release date: December 31, 2023 [eBook #72560]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Tinsley Brothers, 1868

Credits: Sonya Schermann, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SINK OR SWIM? ***





                             SINK OR SWIM?




                             SINK OR SWIM?

                               A Novel.


                           BY THE AUTHOR OF

                        “RECOMMENDED TO MERCY,”

                                 ETC.


                           IN THREE VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.


                                LONDON:
              TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST. STRAND.
                                 1868.

      [_The right of translation and reproduction is reserved._]




                                LONDON:
            ROBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKS,
                          PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.




                             SINK OR SWIM?




CHAPTER I.

WHAT THEY SAID IN THE VILLAGE.


“If I hadn’t heard it from Mrs. Clay herself, I never would have
believed it! To think that John Beacham, who’s a sensible man as men go,
should be marrying an Irishwoman! If Honor Blake was English-born now,
one wouldn’t blame him so much; but to choose a girl that comes of
people who, as everyone knows, you can’t trust farther than you can see
them, is what I call a sin and a shame.”

The speaker was a woman of low stature, elderly, and sharp of voice and
feature. She was seated at a round old-fashioned mahogany table, on
which a teapot of the material known as Britannia metal steamed with a
pleasant warmth, while the odour of buttered toast, “hot and hot,”
filled the little room in which she and a chosen chum and gossip had
met together to talk over the domestic affairs of their friends and
neighbours.

The name and title of the first-mentioned lady was Mrs. Thwaytes, and
she, being at the present time a widow, and highly respected, kept a
small general shop in an old-fashioned village, to which I shall give
the name of Switcham. This village, situated near the grandest and most
imposing of England’s rivers, could be reached by express train in
something a little under an hour and a half from London. It was,
considering this proximity, rather a behindhand village. Progress had
not hitherto made any gigantic strides in the old-world-looking place,
where not a single house was less than a century old, and where the aged
inhabitants of the quiet spot had not as yet ceased to speak of
crinoline as an abomination, and the absence (on young women’s heads) of
that decent article called a cap as a sign and symbol of a lost and
abandoned soul.

The guest of the widow Thwaytes was qualified in many ways to be that
highly-respected personage’s confidential friend and favourite gossip. A
widow indeed she was, forlorn and desolate by her own account, but
comfortable withal in outward circumstances, and possessed of a portly
person, and a complexion indicative of good cheer and inward content.
Mrs. Tamfrey, for that was the relict’s name, had been left (like the
congenial friend above named) with an only daughter to solace her
declining years; and, after duly casting that young woman upon her own
resources as a domestic servant, she--the widow of the deceased Mr.
Tamfrey, a journeyman carpenter in a comfortable way of business--had
entered upon the attractive career of a monthly nurse. In this lucrative
profession she had met with marked and flattering success. Endowed with
a low voice, a caressing manner, and a universal fund of anecdote, as
well as considerable powers of invention, “Mrs. Tam,” as she was
habitually called, made her way very successfully among the matrons,
young and middle-aged, of the district; and over a cup of a “woman’s
best restorer, balmy tea,” the widow Tamfrey was very generally allowed
to be--during the pauses between her professional engagements--very
excellent company.

The room in which these well-suited friends had met for the purpose (not
openly avowed, but nevertheless existent) to which I before alluded was
a snug but not very spacious apartment running parallel with, and having
easy access to, the shop. Miss Thwaytes, the widow’s only daughter, and
a young person verging on forty, was occupied in the said shop--waiting
upon customers and keeping up the credit of the establishment by civil
speeches and oft-repeated remarks on the beauty of the weather and other
such _banal_ topics of conversation. A wonderfully useful person in her
way was Esther Thwaytes; a thorough woman of business, keen-eyed,
calculating, and with only the very smallest of soft spots in the
woman’s heart beating under her maidenly bosom. But there was yet
another purpose besides that of business utility to which Miss Esther
Thwaytes was daily put. With her the aged mother, who possessed but that
one ewe lamb, was always indulging in, not sweet converse, gentle
reader--not the interchange of soul with soul, nor the pleasant
fellowship of congenial trencherwomen--but the inexhaustible enjoyment,
the indescribable satisfaction of what we have heard described in five
single letters as “words.” They were both--the daughter of forty and the
parent of sixty-five--essentially “naggers.” The daily food of
_snip-snap_, the eternal picking of bones, was as necessary to them as
the air they breathed. Deprived of wholesome excitement, the lives of
these two women would have been horribly flat and uninteresting; a _vis
inertiæ_, despite the busy shop, the cheering tea-drinkings, and the
friendly intercourse with that unfailing gossip Mrs. Tamfrey, the
monthly nurse of Switcham.

That exemplary village functionary was pouring out her third _dish_ of
tea when, with a wheezy sigh, she commenced a reply to her friend’s
comment on the approaching marriage.

“As sure as I sits here, Jane Thwaytes,” she said oratorically, “if John
Beacham marries that Irish gurl he’ll come to trouble. There’s that
about Miss Blake as speaks a vollum. It isn’t that she’s, so to speak,
aither bold or forrard; I couldn’t say that of her--no, not if I was to
be put upon my Bible oath; but what I _do_ say is, that she’s got a look
with her eyes that I would have whipped _my_ daughter out of before she
was twelve years old, or I would have known the reason why.”

“It’s singular now, ain’t it,” suggested Mrs. Thwaytes, “that one can’t
learn more about who she is, and where she comes from? A nussery
governess too isn’t much to boast of neither, and I don’t wonder as the
old lady is a bit put out. The Beachams have allers held their heads
high, and John’s mother hasn’t been behindhand with ’em. She’s not the
woman, I’m thinking, to like being mother-in-law to a gurl who may, for
anything that’s known, be a gentleman’s love-child. And, pretty as she
is--I must say that for her--and like a lady too, Miss Blake had to
dress the children, and hem the pincloths, and all that sort of thing at
Clay’s Farm.”

“All that sort of thing! I should think so, and a precious deal more to
that. Why from the first moment that Mrs. Clay was took in labour--and
that’s been twice in the two years that Miss Blake’s been at the
farm--the most of the head-work fell upon Honor. There was this to be
thought of, and that to be done--the children to be kep from noise, and
the master from being put out because the baking was spoiled.
Everything, morning, noon, and night--and I used to think it was a bit
too much for such a mere girl as she is--fell upon the nussery
governess.”

“And that’s true, I believe, or the Clays, one and all, wouldn’t make so
much of her as they do; and the old lady ought to think of that, proud
as she is, for she’ll be a rare help, will Honor, at the Paddocks. A
good headpiece of her own, and not above making herself useful; and add
to that that John’s getting on for forty, and is particular in his
ways--so he is. He means honourable, does Mr. Beacham, and stands high
with rich and poor, and what’s more, he can take his wife to as good a
home as any in the country.”

“Better, maybe, for his wife if it was a poorer one,” said Mrs. Tamfrey,
who knew something of the world and of human nature. “When a young gurl
that’s been used to work marries a man that can keep her without it, ten
to one that she gets into mischief. I don’t say, if she gits a family
about her, which it’s a’most certain she will,” continued Mrs. Tam,
speaking, as was only natural, in the interests of her profession, “that
Mrs. John Beacham won’t settle down; but she’s but a giddy thing at
present, always laughing--I declare it’s the prettiest thing to hear
her, and makes one laugh, too, for company; but if she _don’t_ have a
family--and John Beacham’s nearly old enough to be her father--and if
the young men get about her, why”--and Mrs. Tam, deeming, probably, that
she had said enough to enlighten the feminine mind of her auditor, wound
up her prognostications with a very suggestive sigh.

“I hope not. It would be a sad thing, indeed, if mischief came of this
grand marriage of hers. I _should_ be sorry for John Beacham if it was
to,” mumbled the widow Thwaytes, whose mouth was fuller than was
altogether becoming of well-salted buttered toast. “I should be sorry as
sorry could be for John if trouble was to come upon him that way. Ah
well! if the Squire had only lived! Such a gentleman as he was for
advising and keeping things straight! There isn’t a day nor yet an hour
that the parish doesn’t feel the want of him. If Squire Vavasour had
been spared, things would have gone on, as we’ve all on us said a
hundred times, in quite another guess sort of fashion. There would have
been more living at the Castle then, and a precious sight more money
spent in the parish. The Castle then would have been a proper house for
young people to live in, and be married out of; and now what is it? As
Mrs. Shepherd says--and she ought to know that’s been housekeeper these
twenty years at the great house--there’s as much skinflinting there as
if milady hadn’t as many pounds as she has thousands. ‘I declare,’ says
she to me, which it will be a week to-morrow, the day I was taking tea
with her up at the Castle,--‘I declare,’ says she, ‘it’s a sin and a
shame how little’s been spent this five years at Gillingham Castle. The
Chace itself and the game and all has been let to go to rack and ruin.
Next to no labourers employed, no parties given where there used to be
a’most open house kep, and such a home made for the young gentlemen as
it’s no wonder they should run a little wild when they was let out
like.’”

“There’ll be a change now, I’m thinking,” suggested Mrs. Tamfrey after a
pause; “the young ladies are getting on, you know, and Mr. Arthur coming
of age next year will make something of a stir, in course.”

The widow shook her head with a dreary air of superior wisdom. “From
what Mrs. Shepherd tells me”--and the words were said in one of those
ominous whispers that are intended to imply even more of knowledge than
is expressed--“from what Mrs. Shepherd says, there’s no coming of age
yet awhile for the air aperient of Gillingham. There’s something out of
the common, it appears, though what it is Mrs. Shepherd couldn’t speak
to exactly, in the last entail. Anyway, milady--which seems odd, don’t
it? she having been the heiress--hasn’t got, after a certain day--that’s
pos--anything to do with the estate and property. It’s that, folks
say--them as knows something about the matter--as puts her out so. And
it’s to be, some says, when Mr. Arthur is five-and-twenty that his mamma
will have to walk out of her own house like a private person, after all
the money and land that she was born to.”

“Let milady alone,” put in Mrs. Tam decidedly; “she’ll be rich enough,
if all’s true, whatever happens. There’s a pretty long purse a-filling
somewhere, I’ll be bound. It’s little besides her name that she gives to
all them mad-houses and county ’ospittles that there’s such a talk
about. No, no; Milady Millicent isn’t one to be short of cash, whoever
else goes to the wall--but,” interrupting herself, “my gracious! Jane
Thwaytes, if there ain’t two parties a-waiting in the shop, and no one
in life to serve them but Esther!”

Startled by this appeal to her love of gain and order, the widow, after
a hurried wipe of her lips with the corner of her apron, bustled into
the adjoining shop with a sharp rebuke already on her tongue. It was a
tidy and very prosperous establishment that of which Esther Thwaytes was
the prop and mainstay. In it you could obtain all that the heart of a
reasonable woman of simple tastes and habits ought to desire. On one
side, the counter was strewed with cheap ribbons, snowy cap-fronts,
artificial flowers more gaudy than artistic, with occasionally a
tempting novelty in the shape of the last new thing in bonnets. The
other side of the widow’s flourishing “store” contained goods that were
more useful than ornamental. Tea, coffee, tobacco, and snuff, together
with other articles of home and colonial produce, were procurable at
“the” shop in the main street of Switcham. As a matter of course, the
widow, enjoying the benefit of a monopoly, drove a thriving trade; and,
equally as a matter of course, incessant were her jeremiads on the
disjointedness of the times, the dearness of provisions, the iniquity of
subordinates, and the general decadence of all things since the days
which she was pleased to call “her time.” And yet, at scarcely any hour
of the day from the early hour of opening was the little shop devoid of
customers; while towards the witching time of evening, and that more
especially on a Saturday night (for the widow was no advocate for early
closing), her house was one, it may be said, of “call”--a regular
rendezvous for the busy and the idle, for the sweethearts and the
gossips, of the village where the much-respected widow had been born and
bred.




CHAPTER II.

THE ANTECEDENTS OF MILADY.


The Lady Millicent Vavasour, whose proceedings were thus so freely
commented upon by her inferiors, was the only child of the rich and
potent Earl of Gillingham. That nobleman, who survived the Countess, his
wife, but little more than a year, bequeathed at his decease, with
restrictions and a good deal _à contre cœur_, all that he possessed, in
land, mines, personalty, and otherwise, to his only child, the Lady
Millicent aforesaid and in the last chapter duly commented upon.

The income produced by the above-mentioned properties--of all of which
the heiress came into undisputed possession at the age of
twenty-three--amounted at a moderate computation to thirty thousand
pounds per annum. The Lady Millicent Vavasour therefore took her stand
on the platform of public estimation with the _prestige_ of being one of
the richest heiresses in England.

As might naturally be expected, the eyes of the world and eke the
monster’s tongue had from her earliest womanhood a good deal to look and
say on the subject of the Lady Millicent’s future disposition in
marriage. That she would--like the Maiden Queen of mighty memory, or the
banker’s heiress of nineteenth-century renown--be content to enjoy her
power _alone_, no one appeared for a single moment to imagine. There
exist, always have existed, and probably always will exist, a large
proportion of the bolder sex of whom it is averred, and safely too, that
they are not “marrying men;” but whoever in his or her experience--and I
say it without prejudice--has heard of a “non-marrying woman”? Such a
being, if it were discovered to exist, would be an anomaly, a _lusus
naturæ_, a freak, so to speak, of the mighty mother who has done all
things not only wondrously, but “decently and in order.”

But if there be a class of females likely to “go in,” as the saying is,
for celibacy, that class is the _genus_ heiress. There are causes too
numerous to mention that may account for this established fact: the
watchfulness alike of friends and foes; a natural as well as a
cultivated suspicion that “_men_ are not (always) what they seem;” the
difficulties attendant on an _embarras de choix_; and last, but by no
means least in importance, the fear of being reduced to a second-rate
power,--may all be cited as good and sufficient reasons for the delay
which so frequently occurs in the “going off” of an heiress. As regarded
the Lady Millicent Vavasour, the rich _partie par excellence_ of this
story, the last-mentioned cause was, far and away beyond the rest, the
one to which might be attributed the important fact that she had reached
the age of twenty-four while still a single woman.

There is much to be said in excuse for the almost proverbial arrogance
and love of power which marks the woman who is born to greatness. She is
so often taught--if not indeed by words, at least by the deference of
those around her, by the inevitable yielding to her will, and by the
_kotooing_ of dependents--that she is, in her way, a Queen, that it
would be rather surprising if any humbler ideas of her own position
should find entrance into her mind. A great deal has been advanced and
written on the importance of public schools as tending to the discovery
of that imaginary line known as a young gentleman’s “level;” but whether
this hoped-for good is ever attained, and if attained whether it be
worth the high price often paid for its possession, must remain an open
question; the distressing truth however cannot, I fear, be disputed,
that the “level” of a young lady possessed of forty thousand pounds per
annum is never likely to be found, save and except in rare cases of
matrimonial felicity--in those exceptional cases, I mean, where there is
no struggle for power, where the Salic law as exemplified in the
nineteenth-century wife is virtually set aside, and where (but this is a
_sine quâ non_) the husband is in every way worthy of this heroic act of
voluntary self-abnegation.

That the Lady Millicent Vavasour was very far from being the model woman
whose price is far above rubies will very speedily be seen. She was a
cold and unattractive child, and she grew up to be in many respects a
cold and unattractive woman; but that she was so must in a great measure
be attributed to the peculiarity of her “bringing up,” and, strange to
say, to the regretable fact that she was not born to be a man. The Earl
and Countess of Gillingham were both what I must be permitted to
describe as “family-mad.” That the Vavasours were the most ancient, the
noblest, and most exalted of all the races of men upon earth, this
elderly and highly respectable couple religiously believed. Previously
to her union with the last male of this ancient family, the Lady
Caroline M‘Intyre (the respected mother of Lord Gillingham’s heiress)
had entertained a foolish prepossession in favour of the old Scottish
blood which ran in her own blue veins; but the engrafting of her
northern race in the still nobler stock of the Vavasours of Gillingham
was sufficient to inoculate her with every prejudice entertained by
Richard, eleventh earl of that most princely house.

They were not--barring this one folly--either a particularly silly or an
especially objectionable pair. They were a little grand and distant to
those who _might_ be so daring as to claim equality with themselves, but
to their clearly-marked inferiors and to the actual _poor_ they were
kind, generous, and “pleasant.”

Perhaps the person who suffered the most from the “madness” which may be
said to be inherent in the Vavasour blood was their only child--the Lady
Millicent, whose career will form one of the subjects of these pages. To
her, without intending to be otherwise than affectionate and kind, the
behaviour of both father and mother was invariably cold and distant. She
was never forgiven for the “sin” of her birth--never pardoned, poor
unconscious child, for the guilt of being a girl! As the last male
descendant of the Vavasours, Lord Gillingham would willingly have given
ten years at least of his vast rent-roll, for a son in whose person the
grand old title might be perpetuated; and the Countess his wife fully
shared in what she deemed his very natural discontent. To bear without
murmuring this crumpled rose-leaf on their luxurious couch was not in
the nature of either; so instead of making the best of the only child
with which Providence had blessed them, they did precisely the contrary;
and the little Lady Millicent, deprived of the caresses and the
softening influence of a gentle mother’s love, grew up as I have
described her to be--cold, arrogant, and unamiable.

The young lady herself was fully capable of appreciating the wrong that
had been done, not only to her family but to society at large, by the
deplorable accident of her birth. As one of the richest heiresses in
England, and as the bearer of a name so noble and so honoured, she was
of course a “personage;” and as one of the uppermost (that could not be
denied) of the upper ten thousand she would take her place, and an
exalted place too, among the great ones of the land; but--there was the
rub!--_there_ “pinched the shoe,” and “galled the withers”--she was not
and would not be, in the course of nature, a peeress! Power--the power
that wealth would give--was hers, but precedence--that honour so dearly
valued by her sex--was sadly and, unless it were obtained by marriage,
for ever wanting.

When, after her parents’ decease, which occurred soon after she had
completed her twenty-third year, the orphaned heiress pondered
regretfully upon these things, the idea of purchasing with her valued
thousands one of the highest of England’s titles could scarcely fail to
occur to one whose love of rank--the well-imbibed prejudice of a dull
and unsympathised-with childhood--was only outdone by her passionate
attachment to power. Well did the Lady Millicent know--for her girlhood
had not all been spent in the seclusion of Gillingham, and at London
balls and routs and dinner-parties she had learned something of the
level of gold--well did the heiress know that, were she willing to
barter her rent-roll for rank, the negotiation would have been only too
easily effected. But, all things considered, this young woman was not so
willing. Any superiority enjoyed by a husband, any benefit conferred
upon her through him, would--so singularly was she constituted--have
been as gall and wormwood to her taste. She was overweeningly proud,
besides, even as her parents had been before her, of the name she bore;
and, singular as it may at first seem, it was to that very pride in, and
attachment to the name of Vavasour that the tardy marriage of this proud
and impracticable lady was owing.

Late in the summer of the year following on her accession to wealth and
power, the Lady Millicent set forth in great state on a continental
tour. As companions on the way she had chosen Lord and Lady Merioneth: a
good simple-minded pair, ready and able to be amused, and withal
tolerably slow to comprehend (from the circumstance of their own entire
want of foolish family pride) the besetting sin of their young
companion.

The delicate health of Lady Millicent Vavasour was, to the surprise of
the world in general, the alleged motive for her spending the winter
abroad. It had been suddenly discovered that the lungs of the heiress
were delicate; and although her breadth of chest and generally healthy
appearance tended to correct the assertion, public interest--no unusual
occurrence when the _malade imaginaire_, or otherwise, happens to be a
millionaire--was immediately enlisted in “poor dear” Lady Millicent’s
behalf. “So young!” “so gifted!” “so attractive!” It would, indeed, be
hard (and a “liberty” was _implied_, if not actually spoken) if Death
should venture to approach within hailing-distance the august person of
the Lady of Gillingham. Happily, however, as it soon became manifest,
there was no immediate danger that the wealth of the heiress would be
turned into some obscure and probably (to the public) uninteresting
channel. Long before the money-scattering English party had reached
Florence the Lady Millicent had thrown off every appearance of
invalidness, and was ready for any amusement suitable to her exalted
position which chance might throw in her way. And ready, too, for
something more than amusement--ready to be softened into as much love as
her nature was capable of feeling, by one worthy of the best affections
of a far worthier woman than was the Lady Millicent Vavasour. Cecil
Vavasour was a cousin, many times removed, of that autocratic lady--the
descendant of a junior branch of the noble family whose name he bore;
and, moreover, in _his_ branch of the family there existed the title of
baron--a title which there was every probability would eventually be
borne by this poor and comparatively obscure relation. Comparatively
obscure, for in a world of his own--a world that was not that of the
Lady Millicent Vavasour--the intellectual but retiring Cecil was known
and honoured. She for that reason, among others too insignificant to
mention, had never till on the occasion of this her first continental
trip chanced to fall in with her kinsman; and when at last she did make
his acquaintance, the effect of even a first meeting was marked and
decisive. Not that there was much in Cecil Vavasour’s outward man
calculated to touch a woman’s fancy or to win her heart. He was some
years past thirty, and in person neither handsome nor the reverse; but
there was a something undefinably attractive even in the reserve of
manner, that spoke of latent power, and of an intelligence above that of
ordinary and unreflecting mortals. He was tall, too, and of a stately
presence; one of those men, in short, to whom, both physically and
mentally, a woman, be she ever so highly placed in her own estimation,
would hardly have refused to pay the tribute of tacitly acknowledging to
her own self that he was her master. Cecil’s father, a practical though
not exactly a discerning man, had intended his only son for the Bar; but
circumstances, to say nothing of the young man’s own individual tastes,
decided against the realisation of the old gentleman’s plans. A short
sojourn in Italy, whither he had gone to protect and comfort an invalid
sister, whose days when she left the shores of England were already
well-nigh numbered, had completed the dislike to his profession which
before had been little more than a surmised distaste. Cecilia Vavasour
died a tranquil death in the soft climate of Tuscany; and her brother,
throwing law study to the winds, and leaving _Blackstone_ to grow dusty
on its shelves, remained to make the best of his three hundred a year in
the sunny land that he had learned so soon to love.

Cecil Vavasour had been three years in Italy--a busy idler, devoted,
almost to idolatry, to the Beautiful that has survived the touch of
Time; as well as to the memories, the associations, and the soft sadness
that cling around the decaying ruins of the past. He had roved from
place to place, mixing little in society, but yet not actually shunning
communion with his fellows, when Lady Millicent arrived at Florence. It
would have been impossible, even had he felt the wish (which he did not)
to avoid his cousin, for the quondam barrister not to become intimate
with the heiress of Gillingham. At first he was very shy--as shy as a
proud poor man was almost certain to be under the peculiar circumstances
in which he was placed. Compared to the cousin, who called him Cecil,
and treated him from the first with marked kindness and consideration,
he might well be termed an impecunious relation. Had Lady Millicent’s
conduct towards him been different--had she behaved to him with anything
approaching to her usual rigid arrogance--his poverty would have
troubled Cecil Vavasour but little. It was his young kinswoman’s
gentleness, her unwonted amiability, her actual deference towards
himself, that, while it rendered him ill at ease in her society, both
puzzled and touched him. He little guessed, while gradually falling
under the spell of a woman who in youth was not destitute of personal
attractions, and who could be agreeable when she chose, what was the
true mainspring of her conduct regarding him. He could form no idea of
the hidden demon of Pride lurking beneath that still exterior. To his
thinking, Lady Millicent Vavasour--young, courted, with tens of
thousands yearly at her command, with power to effect so vast an amount
of good to others, and (which we fear was almost equally enviable in Mr.
Vavasour’s sight) with wealth to indulge to the utmost every æsthetic
taste--was scarcely likely to ambition any extra or unpossessed
advantage. And then he was himself so utterly unassuming, so entirely
unaware that he in his own person owned, or was likely ever to own,
gifts that the rich heiress of Gillingham could covet, that, as I said
before, he was at the beginning almost more puzzled than gratified by
her notice.

That this state of things should have occasioned at first a something of
distance in the relations between the cousins is not surprising, nor
need it afford subject for wonder that that very _distance_ lent a
piquancy to their intercourse which was not, to the petted heiress at
least, without its charm. Lady Millicent had been so beset by
flatterers, and so cloyed by adulation, that the silence, the fits of
absence, and the almost _brusqueries_ of her cousin Cecil were greeted
by her as a very agreeable variety. She was sick to death of oversweet
confections, of butter and honey she had been positively surfeited, so
that the honest brown-bread diet, dry and husky though it was, which was
all that she appeared likely to obtain from Cecil Vavasour, tasted fresh
and wholesome to her fevered palate.

But there was, as I before said, another cause--_the_ cause, in
fact--for Lady Millicent’s obvious appreciation of her cousin, and that
motive power was her cousin’s future rank; for Mr. Vavasour, simple as
he stood before her, quiet, unpretending, noticeable for his
carelessness of outward advantages, his simple manners, and his
unfashionable dress, could nevertheless, failing some very abnormal
event, be the means of obtaining for her in a mitigated degree the
fulfilment of her long-cherished desire--the hope of her heart, the
insatiable craving, known only to herself, to wear, while retaining the
noble name of Vavasour, the coronet of a British peeress on her brow.

The courtship, if courtship it could be called, between Lady Millicent
and the future Baron de Vavasour was somewhat singular and out of rule;
and if any distinct offer of marriage were made between the parties--not
a common occurrence, by the way, in set and deliberate phrase, between
acknowledged lovers--that offer was believed by those best acquainted
with the contracting parties to have emanated from the lady. That Cecil
believed--free from personal vanity though he was--in her attachment to
himself there could be no doubt; nothing, therefore, remained for the
man whose own nature was too noble for him to fear for himself the
imputation of mercenary motives, but to put his pride, and his scruples,
if such he had, into his comparatively empty pockets, and to accept the
goods which his millionaire kinswoman had provided for him.

Perhaps, had the autocratic mistress of Gillingham and its dependencies
been better acquainted with the character of Cecil Vavasour, she might
have hesitated longer ere she selected him as the partner of her life.
With all her ambition, she yet required a husband who would understand
_her_ character and enter into her views; and of this Mr. Vavasour soon
showed himself to be incapable. Misled by the natural faith which we all
are apt to place in our own individual judgment, Lady Millicent had
discovered imaginary qualities in the man whom she had _honoured_ with
her choice. Deceived by the extreme composure of manner and the gentle
reserve which were among her kinsman’s outward characteristics, she had
given him credit for an indolence of disposition which she rather
approved of than regretted, and for an inborn pride of race calculated
to assimilate satisfactorily with her own. They were married, and the
Lady Millicent was not long in discovering to her _annoyance_--for hers
was not a character to take a disappointment to _heart_--that she had
made a fatal mistake. A better man, nor one possessed of a more
conscientious spirit than that which dwelt in Cecil Vavasour, never
walked the earth. That this was so, no one who boasted the slightest
knowledge of character would long doubt. It might be, though that fact
had yet to be decided, that the lawyer _manqué_ was not likely to be a
distinguished man; but the most casual observer would have decided at
once upon the impossibility of his being otherwise than an upright and a
straightforward one. But for all this, and though Mr. Vavasour proved to
be, in the broad and usual acceptation of the term, an excellent
husband, Lady Millicent was, and withal showed herself to be, bitterly
and hopelessly disappointed. It was terrible to find that, instead of
sympathising in her ambitious desires, Cecil was content to devote
himself to the cultivation of his understanding, the care of his wife’s
extensive property, the amelioration of the condition of the poor, and
later, as the--to him--exceeding blessing of children was granted to his
hopes, to the education and moral training of his sons and daughters.
_At_ every time and season, and _to_ all the occupations and interests
of her husband, Lady Millicent took marked exception. She had expected
to find him an amiable nonentity, and instead, there was ever at her
side an earnest and highly intelligent companion; one too who, although
he was no rival power ready to edge her off the throne she so dearly
prized, was nevertheless a man who, entertaining both stern and exalted
notions of the responsibilities of the rich, was not easily to be
diverted from the line of duty--often narrow and difficult--which he had
marked out for himself to follow. Under the vexatiousness of this tardy
discovery, Lady Millicent daily fumed and fretted--fumed and fretted
till her temper, never one of the best, grew peevish and easy of
irritation, and till the chafing of the crumpled rose-leaf against the
sensitive skin of the proud woman’s self-esteem grew to be a painful,
and in process of time a never-to-be-cicatrised sore.

Nor was Cecil Vavasour long behindhand in awaking from the one delusion
that had so effectually changed for him the cherished habits of a life.
The conviction that the love in which he had believed had been but a
passing fancy, and the certainty that he was solely valued by her as a
stepping-stone on which to rise to rank, were not subjects for
agreeable reflection. But though Vavasour was capable of feeling keenly
the wrong--for wrong it was--that had been done him, he was the last man
in the world either to complain of, or to grow silently morbid under,
its infliction; only by his deeds could it be surmised that he was an
unwilling sharer in the good things procurable by the Lady Millicent’s
gold; and as, previously to his marriage, he had steadfastly resisted
the making of any _settlement_ by which he could in his own person
benefit, so did he, after becoming convinced of his wife’s indifference,
keep with rigid economy his private expenses within the scope of his own
limited means to defray, while he abstained as much as lay in his power
from indulgence in luxuries which those means would, unassisted, have
been inadequate to procure for him.

Setting aside this glaring instance (which it clearly was) of
eccentricity, Cecil Vavasour, as was universally allowed, acted well up
to the obligations imposed upon the rich and powerful. There was no
lordly house throughout the length and breadth of the land in which the
rights of hospitality were exercised with a more liberal hand than at
the various residences owned and occupied by the Vavasour family. At
Gillingham Castle especially, where the establishment was on an almost
princely scale, the grand old house was twice a year brimming over with
guests, and far and wide spread the reputation for “good entertaining”
of the Lady Millicent and her consort. But for all that this was so, and
although Cecil Vavasour was loved and appreciated by the poor, whose
invaluable friend and adviser he ever proved himself to be, he was not
generally popular either with his equals or his superiors in social
position. To anyone accustomed to look inquiringly into human motives,
and to those who have gained knowledge of mankind by enlarged
association with their fellows, the fact that Cecil Vavasour, with all
his excellence, his gentleness and his hospitality, was not generally a
favourite, will excite but little surprise. As a rule, the silent and
apparently self-conceited man rarely meets with favour, for silence is
too often taken for a diagnostic of pride, and pride is of all human
qualities the one which both men and women find the most difficult to
pardon. But there was yet another quality, and it was the one to which
his taciturnity was mainly to be attributed, that interfered greatly
with the comfort of Cecil Vavasour’s existence--he was constitutionally,
and therefore incurably, _shy_. Now the shyness of a middle-aged
gentleman who has lived much in society, and whose intellect is above
the average, is one of those “facts” to believe in which it is necessary
that the individual called upon to exhibit this credulity should be
either a physiologist, or himself the victim of _mauvaise honte_. It is
probable that Mr. Vavasour met with few or none who were capable either
of understanding or making allowances for his infirmity; and thus it
chanced that, though no man living was more formed by nature to enjoy
the blessings of friendship, he passed through life without meeting (of
his own degree) a single congenial soul into whose breast he could pour
out his sorrows, or ask for sympathy with his joys.

What wonder is it if under these circumstances, and with his large warm
heart dependent solely upon _them_ for tenderness and love, he should
have fairly doated on his children? There were four of them. The eldest,
Arthur, a handsome dark-eyed lad, was destined by the provisions of his
grandfather’s will to enter into possession, at the age of twenty-five,
of by far the greater portion of the Gillingham property, provided that
on his--the said eldest son of Lady Millicent Vavasour--arriving at the
above-named age, his mother should not be in legal phrase a _femme
couverte_. This singular disposition of property occasioned at the time
of the Earl’s decease no little surprise, but owing probably to the
circumstance that there was at that period no “heir male of Lady
Millicent’s body” in existence, only a very limited amount of
discontent was mingled with the universal astonishment of all who
thought themselves qualified to give an opinion on the subject.

The child next in age to this fortune-favoured individual was also a
son; he was little more than a year his brother’s junior, and inherited
more of his father’s disposition than had been engrafted on his elder
brother. The two boys offered (both in person and character) marked
contrasts to each other. The heir was, as I before said, a handsome
fellow, tall, dark-eyed, and well formed. From his cradle he had been a
child of whose outward comeliness any parent might be proud, and Lady
Millicent _was_ proud of him accordingly--proud, but not fond; it was
not in her nature to attach herself to any living being, save and except
the heiress of Gillingham: and the effects of this monopoly of sentiment
very soon became apparent in the young family growing up around her.

Of Horace, her second son, the Lady Millicent was neither proud nor
fond. He was born delicate, and his infancy being a sickly and a
troublesome one, his lady mother took a disgust to the child who was
associated in her mind with doctors’ visits (this great personage, being
very robust herself, had no patience with illness), occasional visits to
a nursery smelling of drugs, and the irritating wailing of a suffering
infant. As little Horace advanced in years, everyone, with the
exception of his mamma, pronounced him to be, though a plain mite of a
child enough, a very engaging and intelligent specimen of humanity. He
was very sweet-tempered too, and docile, “getting” his baby lessons, as
the head nurse expressed herself, twice as quick as Master Vavasour. But
then it must be remembered that Arthur was an elder son; and when a
child is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, anything above the
average amount of brains is, as all the world will allow, a superfluous
possession. Two daughters, Rhoda and Katherine--of whom more
hereafter--completed the family, to the care and education of which
Cecil Vavasour, both from a high sense of duty and following the
dictates of his own heart, greatly devoted himself. Perfectly alive to
the injury done to the children by the absence on their mother’s part of
either the appearance or the reality of maternal tenderness, he did all
that lay in his power to remedy the evil; but with the best intentions,
a man cannot in such a case, to any effectual purpose, play a woman’s
part. A father’s caresses to his child lack ever the softness of a
woman’s touch; and moreover Cecil Vavasour’s nature was not, as we know,
a demonstrative one: his constitutional infirmity of shyness, even when
alone with the children in whose well-being his own happiness was bound
up, shackled and oppressed him, proving a sad hindrance to that perfect
confidence between parent and child which is so valuable an element in
education. But although in some respects Cecil Vavasour might fall short
in his exalted aims, though the young people at the Castle might and
probably did miss the invaluable advantage of which they were deprived
by Lady Millicent’s natural _hardness_ of character, they were
nevertheless, in one respect at least, highly favoured. On their
father’s unchangeable justice they could ever and always implicitly
rely, as well as on that entire absence of caprice which is one of the
most precious negative gifts with which those in power, whether great or
limited, can be endowed.

Perhaps the main error in Mr. Vavasour’s system of education--for he had
in his deep and absorbing conscientiousness formed a plan for the
bringing-up of his children, from which he never deviated--was, that
they were over-educated, and kept too strictly within the narrow bounds
of _standard_ and routine. He may have forgotten, and it is probable
that his lady wife had never known, that the natural fermentation of
human passions within the breast, if too closely confined therein, is
liable to become a dangerous element. Tie the vessel in which
inflammable matter is kept too tightly and too early down, and when the
_hot_ season of the year arrives, and the working goes on with furious
heat within, then bursts the ligature and out flies the cork, while
careful parents, terrified at the explosion, marvel how, after all their
precautions, and the mighty pains they took, there should be a crash so
fearful, and so melancholy a waste of good materials.

There are some men, and of these was Cecil Vavasour, into whose inner
life other, and apparently unauthorised, people entertain a morbid
desire to pry. The question of who really ruled at the Castle was often
mooted, not only in the village of Switcham itself, but throughout the
whole of the adjacent country. That Mr. Vavasour was a very “superior”
man, the world had been from the first quite ready to acknowledge. If
any confirmation of this received fact were wanting, it was to be found,
so said the initiated, in the great and manifest improvement in Lady
Millicent’s property since the epoch of her marriage. This improvement
had been brought about so quietly, and Mr. Vavasour took so little
apparent part in the management of the estates, that it was hard to say
at whose instigation, or by whose superior judgment, so many salutary
reforms had been carried out. There had been no sudden or startling
changes. There had not even been an unjust steward dismissed, or a
series of hitherto unsuspected frauds unearthed and punished. How and
when this silent, unboastful man worked so effectually for the good, not
only of his rich wife’s estates, but for the welfare of each individual
amongst the many whom he religiously believed were, in a manner,
intrusted to his charge, was a mystery to all. Nor was this the only
mystery talked over amongst the inquisitive--and they were
many--regarding Cecil Vavasour and his belongings. Was he, asked the
curious, a happy and a contented man? Had the acquisition of wealth
opened to him new sources of enjoyment? Had Lady Millicent’s husband,
during the years of his married life, suffered in mind from domestic
disappointment, from the coldness of his wife’s unsympathising nature,
or from her besetting sin--a mean jealousy of power? It is very probable
that he did so suffer, for those men frequently undergo the most whose
exterior is undemonstrative, and who are to all appearance insensible to
the touch of Sorrow’s wand; but whether Cecil Vavasour were or were not,
in these respects, a fitting object for sympathy, the public never was
quite able to make up its mind; for before such a desirable end could be
attained, death, to the regret of all who knew him, cut short the
earthly career of one who might truly have been called the “poor man’s
friend.”

Arthur Vavasour had just completed his fifteenth year--he being then in
the fifth form at Eton--when he received the direful intelligence of a
loss which, to him, was truly an irreparable one. The casualty which
rendered him an orphan had from the first been pronounced by the medical
men to be a serious case. It was occasioned by the accidental going-off
of a gun in the hand of a careless under-keeper, one bright May morning,
when Mr. Vavasour and his younger son, who was the private pupil of a
neighbouring clergyman, were rook-shooting in a distant part of
Gillingham Chace. For several days Cecil Vavasour continued to suffer
much and patiently; then on a sudden all pain left him, and he knew that
his doom was sealed. The report of Mr. Vavasour’s danger spread rapidly
through the country, and people flocked in crowds to the lodge-gates of
Gillingham to learn the truth, and to inquire, with hushed voices and
with saddened looks, whether there were any hope that the good man whose
days were numbered might yet be spared to them. For, if they had never
known the value of Cecil Vavasour before, they recognised it now. When
he was about to be removed from amongst them, there was scarcely one
amongst the poor, the sorrowful, and the troubled but remembered some
act of generosity, some sympathising word, some excellent advice
bestowed in time of need. It seemed difficult to realise the truth that
such a man--one too in the full vigour of his life and strength--was so
early destined to go the way of all flesh. To be sure he was but
enduring the lot appointed for everyone that is born of a woman, and
_why_ men should show longer faces, and talk with more whispering voices
of the accidents and losses of the great and wealthy than they are given
to do of the self-same misfortunes when they befall those who are formed
of more common clay, it may at first sight be difficult to understand;
but the fact that so it is remains the same. And thus it chanced that
the Lady Millicent, self-absorbed and phlegmatic though she was,
elicited in her threatened widowhood far more of general sympathy and
interest than would have been awarded to a hundred bereaved and
penniless women sobbing out their hearts’ grief in an atmosphere of
poverty and dirt, and surrounded by ragged orphans howling for the
bread-winner who would return to them no more for ever.

It was well for Cecil Vavasour that he had not left to “the last” the
duty of preparing for the end; for the time allowed him for such
preparation was short indeed. On his bed of death he found courage to
speak very frankly to the wife who stood shocked, miserably
disappointed, and perhaps at that supreme moment remorseful, by his
side. In few but solemn words he committed his children to her care.
They would, under God, who is the Father of the fatherless, be hers only
now, hers to guide, to counsel, and to instruct. On her and on her only
would rest, so the dying man in his feverish anxiety declared to her,
their well-being both in this transitory life and in that to which _he_
was hastening; and as she should do her duty by his treasures, so,
prayed the feeble voice with touching fervour, might He who judgeth all
men have mercy upon her in the world that is to come! They were his last
words. After a faintly-whispered farewell to the old servants, who were
weeping near the door, there remained but the silent pressure of the
death-cold hand, a quiver of the pale lips, as one by one his children
bent their young fresh faces to receive the parting kiss, and the spirit
of Cecil Vavasour entered into its rest.

There was a grand funeral, at which Lady Millicent, in the longest and
_crapiest_ of robes, and utterly devoid of crinoline, assisted, leading
her eldest son by the hand, and looking the bereaved and grieving widow
to perfection. There were many true mourners in the crowd that followed
Cecil Vavasour to the grave, and not a few of these were of opinion that
true sorrow shuns a multitude, and that the newly-made widow who _can_
follow her husband’s ashes to their last resting-place has not very
dearly loved him in his lifetime. Be this as it may--and it is after all
as hard to judge the feelings of others as it is to estimate their
powers of self-control--the Lady Millicent, surrounded by her children,
did conduct herself at her dead husband’s funeral with a very
praiseworthy amount of dignified self-command. Among those who had been
Cecil Vavasour’s friends and acquaintances there were grave faces and
regretful hearts; but the poor wept for him; and the time soon came,
after he had departed from among them, when folk of all degrees began to
see clearly what manner of man he had been of whom during his
unobtrusive life they had known so little.




CHAPTER III.

EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY.


The approaching marriage of Mr. John Beacham, whose family had been time
out of mind one of the most respected and respectable in the entire
parish of Switcham, within the boundaries of which the Beachams had held
land to a large extent under many a successive lord of the manor of
Gillingham, was a very important event in that quiet locality. In his
way, John Beacham might almost be styled a _public_ character. Far and
near, whenever a certain highly interesting subject--namely, that of
horses--was upon the _tapis_, honest John’s name was pretty certain to
be brought prominently forward. It was surprising--in a country and on a
matter in which almost every young gentleman, probably, held a
first-rate opinion of his own merits as a judge of “cattle”--what weight
the fiat of John Beacham, farmer and horse-breeder, was wont to carry
with it. The latter vocation--and a highly lucrative one it was--had not
been exercised for more than a dozen years or so by the lessees of
Shotover Farm, by which name, by the way, the hundreds of broad acres
rented by the Beacham family had, for generations past, been known. Some
six years before the death of John’s father, the estate called Updown
Paddocks, and which consisted of many a broad and fertile meadow,
admirably adapted for breeding purposes, was announced to be for sale.
It lay in tempting proximity to Mr. Beacham’s farm; the price in that
prudent individual’s opinion was a reasonable one; he and his trusted
son John were agreed in the matter; so, in due course of time, the
tenants of Shotover progressed to the dignity of landowners. Meanwhile,
and pending the final arrangements for the purchase, John’s mother, the
“old lady” of whom honourable mention has already been made, showed
herself anything but favourable to the new plan. Though a Yorkshire
woman born and bred, the love of horses and of horse-dealing was not
inherent in her septuagenarian breast. She was a tall, large-boned, but,
in spite of her seventy years, still a well-favoured woman. John was her
only surviving child, infantile complaints of various kinds having
carried away four others before they had had time to wind themselves too
closely round her heart; and in the said John, therefore--in his present
comfort and his future fortunes--all her best affections and her
keenest interests were concentrated. Many were the anxious moments
endured, and not a few the querulous remarks uttered, by the farmer’s
cautious wife before the complete success of the undertaking, so
judiciously, and withal so conscientiously, carried on by her husband
and son, laid her fears to rest, and effectually put a stop to her
gloomy forebodings of loss and ruin. It is true that the excellent woman
was kept a little in the dark regarding the details of the business
which was already making for the breeding establishment of Beacham and
Son a name throughout the land. The “old lady”--for by that title John’s
stately mother was known in the neighbourhood of her abode--would have
been not a little startled had she chanced to learn the amount of money
that had been invested at Updown Paddocks. She seldom, after having
become perfectly convinced that the “concern” was a safe investment,
alluded to the subject; but it is more than probable that had Mrs.
Beacham been required to make a rough guess at the sum-total expended
yearly on the “horse-breeding business,” she would, without much
hesitation, have named something under half the amount that John, who
was no niggard of his cash, thought nothing of paying for the least
costly of his pure-blooded “sires.”

Mrs. Beacham was justly proud of the increase of wealth and
consideration which had accrued to her family by means--as she was fully
justified in believing--of the intelligence and undeviating rectitude of
her husband and son. But, most of all, in the simplicity of her feudal
zeal, she was boastful of the friendship and unfailing regard evinced
for both by the “good Squire,” as he was everywhere denominated (for
they were tenants, not of Mr. Vavasour, but of “milady”), by that
discriminating and kindly gentleman. A deeply-rooted love of the animal
of whose race so many noble specimens were always to be seen at Updown
Paddocks would have been alone sufficient to account for Cecil
Vavasour’s frequent visits to Mr. Beacham’s establishment; but, in
addition to this, there was a genuine liking and sincere respect for the
two men who never permitted the desire for gain to triumph over their
sense of honour, and who, although they breathed the air which is
supposed to be so deleterious to honesty, yet retained a pure and
healthy sense of what was due, not only to their customers and
themselves, but to the noble animals on whose merits they so
successfully traded. Cecil Vavasour thoroughly enjoyed the five miles of
pleasant country walk, which had for its end and object a chat with Lady
Millicent’s model tenants--the Beachams of Updown Paddocks. He
delighted in their shrewd uncommon sense, in their practical equine
knowledge, in their cordial welcome, and, above all, in the sight of the
young stock gambolling over the sweet short pasture of the Paddocks,
whilst their sober mothers cropped the staff of their lives in placid
and unmolested enjoyment.

The deaths, under very different circumstances, of the Squire and John’s
greatly-regretted father took place within three months of each other.
The illness of the latter was a lingering one, induced by imprudent
self-exposure to wet and cold; and when at last the news went forth that
the old man was no more, deep and general was the regret expressed by
all ranks for his loss. His widow, too, mourned very sincerely for one
who had been a good husband for the space of near upon forty years to
her; but then she was so fortunate as to have “John” to comfort her, and
he, as all the neighbours round would have been ready to acknowledge,
was “a host in himself.”

       *       *       *       *       *

It was the last day of April, the eve of “the maddest, merriest day in
all the glad new year,” and the eve, besides, of John Beacham’s
wedding-day--the day that was to make him, according to his own belief,
the happiest of human beings. The weather was lovely. The spring had
been a forward one, so that there were not wanting lilacs and
laburnums, Gueldres roses and hawthorn blossom, to deck the maypoles and
adorn the floral arch which it was the gallant purpose of the Switcham
youths to erect over the churchyard gate, through which the bridal party
had to pass.

The exceeding beauty of the girl who had won what was universally
considered by her _peers_ a prize in the matrimonial market, and a
certain mystery which hung about her origin, would alone have been
sufficient, without reckoning John Beacham’s well-deserved popularity,
to account for the interest and curiosity created by the approaching
nuptials. Honor Blake certainly was very lovely; that could not be
denied. Fresh and sweet as a rose in June, with a profusion of
light-brown wavy hair, melting blue eyes (had they in very truth a
“look,” as Mrs. Tamfrey averred, in their languid depths?), and cherry
lips that seemed pouting to be kissed; but for all this beauty, and
partly, perhaps, because of her rich personal endowments, women--ay, and
men likewise--were very curious to learn something certain and tangible
regarding the quondam nursery governess at Clay’s Farm. All that was
positively known regarding John’s _fiancée_ amounted to this--namely,
that her early childhood had been passed at a superior description of
farm-house in the far west of Ireland, and, moreover, it was very
apparent that she had been delicately as well as tenderly reared. At the
age of seven, a person calling herself the child’s aunt had removed the
little Honor from the affectionate care of the “widow Moriarty,” the
“snug woman” who had hitherto acted a mother’s part by the blue-eyed
Irish maiden; and the next important event in the little girl’s life was
the being placed in a respectable country boarding-school, where she
completed an education that was more solid than ornamental. Eventually,
and when she had reached the age of sixteen, Miss Blake, through the
medium of the above-spoken-of relation, whose name was Bainbridge, and
who had been for many years in the service, as housekeeper, of a wealthy
Sandyshire family, obtained the situation of nursery governess at Clay’s
Farm. The Clays were excellent people in their line, and they neither
overworked nor underfed the young person, who did her best, though she
was still, as good-natured Mrs. Clay often said, “but a giddy thing,” to
please them.

John Beacham, although he had not been behindhand in admiring Honor’s
beauty, was too busy, and owned too little of a sentimental nature, to
fall in love with her at first sight. She was such a mere child, too,
compared to himself. He, a man of thirty-five, weather-beaten, and with
lines upon his brow, to say nothing of a rare gray hair or two that his
old mother viewed with pain cropping out in his thick brown whiskers,
was many a year too old to mate himself with that bright bud of beauty.
But though steady John Beacham was wise enough in his calmer moments,
and when safe from the glamour of Honor Blake’s blue eyes, to remember
these salutary facts, it was altogether a different affair when he
chanced to meet her, looking so brightly pretty, walking with the
farmer’s children in the shady lanes, or when the little lake, on the
borders of Clay’s Farm, was ice-bound in the cold December weather,
making a sunny spot where her sweet radiant face was seen amongst the
busy skaters. There is no need to dwell upon the not very remarkable
particulars of this rustic courtship. John was Honor’s first lover--the
first that she had ever thought or read of. Marriage--an affair to which
she, like every girl of sense, of course looked forward to--seemed a
pleasant, an exciting, and an important event in life. It would be
delightful to have new clothes, and a home and children of her own; for
Honor was very fond of, as well as patient with, little people; and
perhaps her satisfaction at her approaching marriage was more closely
connected with thoughts of baby-smiles and “waxen touches” than the
girl herself, in her pure and perfect innocence, suspected. Be that as
it may, she did not hesitate, no, not for a single moment, ere she said
“yes” in answer to John Beacham’s offer; nor afterwards, when the hour
for reflection came, did she feel one pang of regret for the unqualified
assent that she had given.

They were to be married in May--as John arranged before he left the
small old-fashioned “company” parlour at Mr. Clay’s farm, in which this
important chapter in the joint lives of himself and Honor had been
opened. To be married in May,--that is to say, in two months’ time,--and
not a word imparted as yet to the one so vitally interested in the
matter--not a hint of what was going on dropped to the “old lady” at
Updown Paddocks!

Mrs. Beacham, who had kept house for her well-beloved John from the hour
when the old man had departed for a world where seed-time and harvest
are no more, was a woman acknowledged by all who knew her (and, indeed,
she had, for that matter, been known to boast of the peculiarity
herself) to have not only a “will” but “ways” of her own. She was a
bustling busy personage, one whom no one in her household would have
ventured to “answer;” while as for interference with any of her orders
or arrangements, why not even John himself would have dreamt of such a
thing. The love of power and rule was in her plebeian breast fully as
firmly implanted as in that of the autocratic mistress of the
Castle--the division of her kingdom would have been as unpleasant a
disintegration to the one as to the other; and it therefore required
some little courage on John Beacham’s part to enable him to go through
with credit the duty of imparting to his mother that he was about to
take unto himself a wife.

Between Mrs. Beacham and her son there had always existed a sincere,
though not a demonstrative, affection. They had, moreover, no secrets
from one another, and nothing in John’s previous life and conversation
had ever tended to awaken in the susceptible mind of the “old lady” the
natural jealousy of a mother. It was wonderful during his twenty years
or thereabouts of manhood how very little the straightforward
fully-occupied fellow had had to tell. On his first emerging from
hobbledehoyhood, that discreet body, his mother, had not been without
her fears that John would play, after the example of other lads, the
lover and the fool. Anxiously, and much as a fussy trembling hen
watches, when they seem likely to get into troubled waters, the erratic
movements of a brood of ducklings, so did the parent of honest
unsentimental John torment herself with the fear that some “silly
useless chit,” some “forward wasteful hussy,” was alluring her precious
son into the hot waters of a love-scrape. Time wore on, however; the
down gave place to bristles on the young farmer’s chin, his voice grew
manly, and he took his place as one having authority in the family
councils, while as yet he betrayed no symptoms calculated to justify his
mother’s alarm.

The neighbours (for a single young man in John’s position is, to a
certain extent, public property) began at length to grow alarmed at the
apparently phlegmatic character of Mr. Beacham’s idiosyncrasy. It seemed
to them so terribly likely that he would live and die a bachelor; and
then what a throwing away of advantages, what a loss to some young woman
or other of the many who would have said “yes” to John of such a house
and home as would be provided for her at the Paddocks!

These lamentations and prognostics, when they reached the ears of Mrs.
Beacham, were met not only with ridicule, but with an indignant protest.
“What could they, a set of ignorant busybodies, know of what was passing
in the mind of a sensible man like John? She had no patience, not she,
with that everlasting talk about getting married, putting thoughts into
young men’s heads that wouldn’t be there without, and interfering in a
way that no decent person ought to do with other people’s sons. If John
meant to marry he would, and if he didn’t why he wouldn’t, and that was
all about it; and for her part, she just wished that everybody would
leave him alone and mind their own business.”

At length, and by the time that Mrs. Beacham had almost, if not quite,
ceased to think of her son as a possibly marrying man, he--the hitherto
practical and prudent bachelor--began to manifest certain symptoms,
which, but for the sense of security into which she had rocked herself,
could scarcely have failed to awaken the spirit of suspicion in the old
lady’s breast. It was again owing to the hints of her neighbours, and
the more outspoken words of that agreeable gossip the widow Thwaytes,
that certain eccentricities perpetrated by her son reached his mother’s
ears. Among the most suggestive of these eccentricities was the purchase
in London of a “booky” of hothouse flowers, and the driving of his big
black horse “like mad” to Clay’s Farm, in order that the gardenias and
the Cape jasmines might be fresh and sweet when they met the eyes of
pretty Honor Blake.

At first, Mrs. Beacham positively declined to entertain the idea that at
his time of life John would be that foolish as to be made an idiot of by
a “gel.” As long as blindness to her son’s weakness was possible, she
shut her eyes resolutely to facts, and refused to believe even the
evidence of her senses. The neighbours might, and indeed at this
interesting crisis they _did_, come about her daily like bees, buzzing
restlessly about the tempting honey-pot, in which was silently
fermenting a domestic event, in the boiling-point of which all felt
themselves to be more or less intimately concerned; but busy though they
were, and curious, as well as tolerably well informed withal, his
mother, trusting to John’s good sense, and being herself either ignorant
or forgetful of the power of the tender passion, remained tranquil in
her fancied security.

But at last the storm burst, and the hour for full confession came. On
one blustering March night, when the shutters of the old farm-house were
closed against the wild north wind--when the mother and son were sitting
at the sturdy well-polished mahogany table, he, with his account-books
before him, while Mrs. Beacham, on thrifty thoughts intent, was engaged
heart and soul in turning the heel of a gray lambswool stocking--John,
after much debating in his own mind as to the manner in which his
communication could best be made, stammered forth the few initiatory
words that rendered the after disclosure comparatively easy.

“Mother, you know Honor Blake?” and having so said, with his big manly
heart beating a trifle faster than usual, John Beacham leant back in his
chair, and thrust his two hands into his waistcoat-pockets.

The old woman dropped her knitting-needles in the extremity of her
surprise and consternation.

“Know the girl!” she repeated, looking up blankly at John’s troubled
face; whereupon he, taking heart of grace, entered upon his confession.

“Mother, it’s a long story, and I don’t know exactly where to begin.”

“Then you had better commence at the end,” said the old lady crossly.
John, however, took her up at once. His hesitation and timidity had been
terrible barriers to fluency so long as his mother’s _feelings_ were to
be soothed, and her jealousy of his affection laid to rest; but directly
it became a question of _temper_--when once the old lady, as was her
wont on rare occasions of irritation, began to take her son “up
short”--then hesitation vanished as if by magic, and John Beacham found
comparatively no difficulty in telling his news.

“Come, come, mother,” he said cheerfully, “don’t take what I’m going to
say that way. You couldn’t surely have expected--it wasn’t in human
nature, you know--that I should go on all my life like this.”

“Like this! and what, I should be glad to know, do you mean by ‘this’?
_This_, indeed! Why, John, haven’t you been done for, and cared for, and
looked to? and haven’t you had a mother that’s kep house for you as
careful and as regular, though I say it, as ever a house was? Haven’t I
seen to the linen, and made sure you wasn’t cheated, as most lads are,
by the woman servants, which they take advantage of their foolishness,
and--and,” with a little quiet whimper that went to John’s heart, “what
more--I only ask you that, John--can you want of a woman than what your
poor old mother has done for you?”

This appeal, absurd and utterly unreasonable though it was, touched
John; so rising briskly from his chair, he, to the manifest detriment of
the crimpest of ruffs, threw his arm round the old woman’s neck, and
kissed her withered but still rosy cheek fondly.

“Dear old mother,” he said cheerily, “as if I didn’t know all that!
You’ve been everything to me, God knows, and I should be a brute if I
could forget it; but, mammy,” he went on coaxingly, and with a scarcely
conscious use of the old and half-forgotten name which was hers in the
long-past days of his troublesome boyhood, “you must remember that I am
getting on; and if I’m ever to think about finding a wife at all, it’s
time I set about it. Besides, there’s Honor, who--”

“Why, John, she’s Irish!” broke in the old lady, in a tone well
calculated to convey the impression that she, at least, considered Miss
Blake’s birthplace as an insuperable bar to any closer connection with
himself. “She’s Irish, which is bad enough of itself, dear knows,
without it’s being said of her, as it is said, which well you know,
John, that she’s a young woman as hasn’t friends. In my time, which they
say everything’s changed now, and more’s the pity--if folks was
respectable they’d friends of some sort or another to show, which this
Miss Blake seemingly has not; and, John,” lowering her voice to a
whisper, although they were far enough removed from human ears, she and
John in fact being the only two persons still up and about in the old
house, “John, do you know, between ourselves, I shouldn’t wonder, that I
shouldn’t, if the girl was to turn out to be a love-child!”

John was silent for a moment, being in fact utterly at a loss how best
to reply to these decidedly unpleasant suggestions. He had himself--but
that was prior to the time when he had become so blindly and irrevocably
in love--he had himself felt some misgivings, in addition to some little
curiosity, regarding Honor Blake’s birth and parentage. Not, as he had
since taught himself to think, that the matter was one of primary
importance. To be sure, if he _had_ a rather strong prejudice regarding
such things, it was in favour of legitimate birth. He certainly would
not be exactly gratified by the tardy discovery that his dearly beloved
Honor was a “love-child;” but then, on the other hand, if his bride did
chance to be that reprobated being, a friendless girl, why there was
comfort after all to be picked out of _that_. Having no near and
acknowledged kinsfolk of her own, she would be the more likely to devote
herself exclusively to her husband; and it was this comforting
reflection which enabled him to respond with tolerable boldness to Mrs.
Beacham’s hypothesis.

“As to Honor’s being Irish, mother, I don’t think that matters much one
way or the other. There’s good and bad in all countries, and in my
opinion she’s as much too good for me, even if she was to turn out what
you call a ‘love-child,’ as she is too young and too pretty.”

“Too good!” retorted the old woman angrily; “I should just like to hear
anybody else say such a word as that! I’d pretty soon show ’em what I
thought of their opinion!”

John Beacham laughed. “There’d be plenty,” he rejoined, “if they were
only bold enough, that you’d hear say that same, mother; for Honor is
far and away too good for a man of my age, who has got somehow into
bachelor ways, and who’s a rough out-of-doors kind of man compared to
her. Yes, she’s far and away too good, and so you’ll think, mother, when
you come to know her better. She’s as gentle as a lamb, and as playful,
pretty creature! as a kitten, and not a bit vain nor stuck up, for all
that she must know how beautiful she is. So very beautiful and delicate!
Why she’s like a precious bit of china, or one of the sweet
pink-and-white flowers in the Castle conservatory. I don’t wonder that
people talk of her, or that they come from miles away to Switcham church
just to get a look at the blue-eyed Irish girl--the darling that, with
your leave, dear mother, I hope on May-day next to call my wife.”

John Beacham was certainly not intended by nature for a diplomatist;
nevertheless, he showed some knowledge of human nature, and of his
mother’s nature in particular, when he adduced the fact that the fame of
Honor’s beauty had spread far and wide, as an argument in favour of his
marriage. If Mrs. Beacham possessed one ingrained weakness more patent
than the rest, it was that very common one of steadfastly believing each
and all of her belongings to be incalculably superior to those of a
similar nature owned by anyone else. That her son’s wife would be
beautiful beyond the average loveliness of womankind was a great point
in favour of Mrs. Beacham’s future daughter-in-law. The worthy woman
forgot--as who would not have done under the circumstances?--that beauty
is a dangerous gift, and that a “fair woman,” should she chance to be
without “discretion,” is often very inconveniently placed in a sober and
quiet man’s household. For the moment too the old lady, who loved rule
so well, forgot that the more attractive in person was her son’s bride,
the less chance did there exist that she herself could “hold her own”
against this new and overwhelming influence. For the hour, however,
maternal love and a certain sense of gratified pride being in the
ascendant, she replied to John’s eulogium in a manner which,
notwithstanding the tone of plaintive resignation that marked her words,
sent John reassured and comforted to bed.

“Well, well,” she said, with the sigh peculiar to elderly ladies when
they are about to _se poser en victimes_,--“well, well! I suppose that
what is to be will be. In course, it isn’t for old folks like me to give
advice to young ones. The weak must go to the wall, as it’s only right,
I suppose, and nat’ral they should; and them as has had their day must
just make room, like the trees and the plants as is withered away, for
others. I only hope, that’s all I have to say, that she’ll make you a
good wife, John; and if so be she does, why I’m not one--be sure of
that--to be set against her. But it’s hard lines all the same, so it is.
‘A son’s not your son,’ as the saying goes, ‘when he takes him a wife.’
No, he’s not your son--come what come may.”

And Mrs. Beacham, after solacing herself with the utterance of this
soothing reflection, took herself off quietly to bed.




CHAPTER IV.

MRS. BEACHAM “RUNS RUSTY.”


It was, as I before said, the day previous to that appointed for the
wedding, and Mrs. Beacham, feeling slightly bemuddled and restless, and
being withal half, and only half, reconciled to her son’s marriage, was
passing a quiet hour in the large old-fashioned kitchen-garden, which
had formed for the best part of half a century her glory and her pride.

In the days before John’s engagement to Honor Blake, and when the mother
and son together ruled the household in harmony, and with a prudent yet
not illiberal hand, Mrs. Beacham had been remarkable for a quiet
cheerfulness of disposition and--making allowance for occasional
outbreaks--for a kindly temper. The world had hitherto gone well with
her, and she--in common gratitude bound--had gone well with the world.
What wonder was it, then, that Updown Paddocks, with its cheery,
hospitable mistress, and with “young John,” so pleasant as he was, and
open-handed, came to be well appreciated as a “good house,” to use a
rustic but expressive phrase, throughout the whole country side?

There was something anomalous, as may already have been noticed, in the
social position occupied by the wealthy owner of Updown Paddocks. A
simple yeoman by birth, but withal well educated--for he had passed
through the grammar-school, at which, according to his mother’s frequent
boast, more than half the pupils were “gentlemen’s sons”--John Beacham,
whose manners, if not fashionable, were such as to render him quite an
admissible guest, was nearly as frequently met with at the tables of the
middle-class aristocracy as at the humbler “boards” of those who might
be more correctly termed his equals. As a natural result also of his
profession as a horse-breeder (bear in mind, however, O captious reader,
with what an honest and unselfish steadiness of purpose that trade was
carried on), his intimate acquaintance amongst men socially very much
his superiors rapidly increased; and so great was the esteem in which
John Beacham, not only as an honourable man, but as one whose knowledge
of horse-flesh could not be denied, was held, that at the time of his
marriage with pretty Honor Blake it would have occasioned no surprise
to the Lord-lieutenant of the County had he been invited to meet at
dinner the man whose yearly sales of stock amounted on an average to
double the net-income of the acknowledged greatest man in Sandyshire.

Nor was Mrs. Beacham, after a fashion appreciated by herself, without
her share of the popularity and honours enjoyed by her son. It is true
that she was never included in the invitations over which her maternal
heart rejoiced. Never, even in a dream, had the stately old lady, in her
black lutestring dress, and her cap of finest Mechlin lace (a heirloom
in her family), found herself a guest at Gillingham Castle, at Clifton
Court, or even at the less-imposing table of sporting Dr. Thorpe, the
very reverend the Dean of the neighbouring episcopal town of Gawthorpe.
But the sensible old woman was quite content to be thus excluded: she
entertained very shrewd ideas, not only regarding old womanhood, but the
proprieties of life generally, and had not, at her age, to learn that,
even had all things besides been what she, in her simplicity, was wont
to call “suitable,” there remained the unanswerable fact that after a
certain age ladies cease to be ornamental, and as dinner-table guests
must therefore expect to be overlooked.

But although this autocratic middle-class dowager had been hitherto
philosophically content to remain in the background, it was more than
probable that she would take a different view of this highly important
matter, and would be less amenable to reason, should the beautiful
daughter-in-law, whose loveliness might, as the saying is, “adorn a
court,” chance to be more highly appreciated than herself by the society
to which her son was by courtesy admitted. Even, however, were that not
to be the case, there still remained the more than probability that the
homage which in John’s home had hitherto been paid to herself, to _her_
hospitality, _her_ “pleasantness,” and _her_ powers of causing social
enjoyment, would be shared by, if not indeed transferred to, the far
younger and more attractive woman who was so soon to make an inroad into
Updown Paddocks. Like many hospitable people, Mrs. Beacham was rather
inordinately fond of popularity, and the idea of sharing that popularity
with a young and winsome bride was eminently distasteful to her.

Ah, well indeed is it for us that the dark corners of our hearts can be
seen only by ourselves and by a God who judges mercifully. Our best
friends and our dearest relations--the wife of our bosom, and the
husband of our choice--might have to hold his or her breath with
surprise and consternation could a glance behind the unholy of unholies
be obtained, and what is thought and planned in those hidden corners be
brought to light. Honor Blake’s future mother-in-law was neither a
cold-hearted nor a cruel woman; and yet, as the time of her expected
deposition drew nigh, it is to be feared that not a few of the
reprehensible feelings which go far towards the making of a villain rose
up within her breast against John’s unoffending bride elect.

“Well, mother, and what’s the case with you? Jolly--eh?” exclaimed a
cheery voice behind the widow, as that grieving woman, with her head
bent lower than was usual with her, prepared to take a fourth turn along
her favourite walk. “Pretty bobbish--eh?” John repeated, attempting,
after the fashion of cheerful strong-nerved persons, to brighten the
countenance and enliven the spirits of the sorrowful by a loud voice and
unaccustomed sportiveness of language. “Speculating on the crop of
gooseberries, eh?” John added, offering his arm to his mother, who
accepted the attention with a sigh that boded ill for the success of her
son’s efforts. “Plenty of work this year in the preserving line, I
expect; I never saw a greater promise of fruit.”

“It wasn’t the gooseberries nor yet the currants I was thinking of,
John,” said Mrs. Beacham mournfully. “It’s to-morrow was in my head,
and I couldn’t help wishing, that I couldn’t, that Honor was more
steady-like, and older too, John, for your sake. It would be better by
half if she was nigher thirty than twenty. Why she’s little better than
a child, and it’s not so easy, let me tell you, to put old heads upon
young shoulders.”

John laughed hilariously. Naturally of a cheerful turn of mind, his
spirits, as the hour of his wedded happiness drew near, grew almost
boisterous, and although not given to the utterance of melodious sounds,
he could have sung aloud for very joy through every hour of that his
marriage eve.

“Thank you for nothing, mother,” he said good-humouredly; “I’m quite
content with my young woman as she is. Youth’s a complaint that’s pretty
soon got the better of with all of us, and Honor--Heaven bless her!--has
got more sense and judgment, child as she is, than many an older woman.
God grant I may make her life a happy one!” he added, raising his hat
reverently. “If it depends on me to do it, I’m not afraid but what
she’ll find all go smoothly at the Paddocks.”

There was a pause after this rather suggestive speech, a pause which
Mrs. Beacham filled up by mentally asking herself what John could mean.
Were his words intended to convey a hint? or, what was still more
hurtful to her maternal feelings, a _warning_? Could it be that John was
already preparing to mount guard over his precious Honor? Had he thus
betimes his lance in rest to defend her from domestic evils, from
imaginary wounds to be inflicted hereafter by her mother-in-law? The
thought flashed through her mind, bringing a look that was not
altogether pleasant to her still bright, bead-like black eyes: one
glance, however, at her son’s honest countenance was sufficient to make
her ashamed of having for a moment entertained the suspicion that he had
implied more than met the ear. He was in very truth incapable of aught
that was not thoroughly open and straightforward, and the mother who
bore him should have learned by long experience that the female art of
innuendoing was as foreign to his nature and habits as the making a
bonnet, or the concocting of a Sunday pie.

Mrs. Beacham, at the age of threescore years and ten, had not yet quite
passed the age of impulsiveness. She had wronged that kindly-natured son
of hers by a suspicion injurious to his habitual frankness, and to the
affection towards herself on which she had such good reason to rely, and
self-reproach rendered her for the moment both tender and apologetic.

“My dear boy,” she said, pressing his strong arm with her thin
be-mittened fingers, “it sha’n’t be _my_ fault if this marriage of yours
don’t turn out well. But I’m an old woman now, my dear, and you must
make allowances. It may go a little hard with me at first, too, to see
another cared for afore me, but I shall get used to that; and, John, you
may trust your mother, for how could I help loving the woman that was
good to my boy?”

“That’s right, mother,” said John heartily; “you couldn’t, I’m certain
sure of that. And Honor will be good; never fear for her. She may be a
trifle giddy and thoughtless, perhaps; though even if she’s that, I’ve
got to find it out; but her heart--the darling!--is in the right place,
and that, to my mind, is what signifies the most. I only wish you could
have seen her with those children of Clay’s! It would have done your
heart good. I declare, she’s been as patient as an angel with that
little pickle Tom, when I should have liked nothing better than to punch
his ugly head; and then as to taking care of one in sickness, you should
just hear Mrs. Clay talk of her! So quiet and so sensible; always giving
the medicines at the right time, and never a thought about herself, even
if she was nights upon nights kept out of her bed, poor girl. Why,
mother, she must be almost as clever about sick people as you are
yourself--and that’s saying a good deal, as I, who have had an illness
or two in my life, can witness to.”

The aged mother and her stalwart son were on the best possible terms by
this time, she leaning with an air of proud maternal content on his arm
as they stood together on the broad walk which ran along the far end of
the well-stocked garden. The view from that spot was an extended as well
as a pleasant one. Away beyond the bright green meadows, where the young
stock leaped and gambolled on the springy turf--away beyond the not
unpicturesque ranges of buildings suggestive of John Beacham’s lucrative
business--lay “hedgerow elms,” and hills gray-blue in the soft spring
sunshine, while to the right, beyond Clay’s Farm, where pretty Honor
Blake was making ready for her bridal, an extensive pine-forest gave
depth and “body” to the picture.

“Isn’t it pretty, mother?” John said. “I think the view from this walk
prettier every time I see it. She’s sure, Honor is, to like the
Paddocks; and only to think that to-morrow is to be our wedding-day; and
that in a fortnight--not more; for I don’t intend to be away longer from
you and home--only to think that in a fortnight my little Honor may be
standing here between us, listening to the nightingales, I hope; for
they’ll be singing in the hawthorn hedge, as they do every year, by
that time; and, O, mother, it all seems too bright and beautiful to be
true!”

There was a moisture, strong man though he was and iron-nerved, in
John’s clear brown eyes as he spoke of his coming joy, and his voice
trembled with emotion. The old lady noticed his agitation; and again her
heart was hardened, not against her son, but against the unconscious
object of his love.

“He never shed a tear, that I can remember, ever since he was a man
grown, for _me_,” was her silent reflection as they passed together into
the old farm-house. Mrs. Beacham was, as I have endeavoured to make
appear, very far from being an ill-disposed woman; and yet it was,
perhaps, just as well for John’s peace of mind that he knew nothing of
the strange complication of feelings which, albeit they owed their
origin to devotion towards himself, threatened, nevertheless, to make
shipwreck of the comfort and happiness of his idolised Honor.




CHAPTER V.

THE DAY OF DAYS.


“Mayn’t I come in, Honor? O, please let me! Mother said I might come and
ask; and I’ve brought you such a many pretty flowers. We’ve been up,
Teddy and I have, ever since five o’clock, looking for sweet orchids in
the south meadow. Do, O do let me in! I’ll be as good as gold; and I
won’t rumple your new frock one bit.”

It was early morning yet on the eventful day which had been appointed
for Honor Blake’s nuptials. Those early daylight hours had seemed very
long to the girl who, for the first time in her life, had slept a
troubled sleep; and yet, when little Jenny Clay, a chubby bright-eyed
child of seven, tapped at the bride’s door, and vehemently implored to
be admitted, the big white-faced kitchen clock had but just struck the
hour of six, and it wanted still some four hours of the time when the
little girl, already half wild with excitement, would enjoy her
long-promised honour--namely, that of being first bridesmaid to the
heroine of the day, her dearly-loved Honor Blake.

Jenny was in her normal state a quiet rational child enough; but “the
wedding” had, for the time being, turned everything (without,
unfortunately, excepting the children’s brains) topsy-turvy at Clay’s
Farm. A lawless time during the week preceding her wedding-day had
Honor’s quondam pupils; and poor Mrs. Clay, what with the last baby, and
the expectation, in the course of the summer, of a ninth visit from the
widow Tamfrey, had enough to do in keeping, as she often remarked, the
house from being turned out of windows.

During Jenny’s lengthened entreaty--an entreaty which had been responded
to by a voice within the bolted door, begging to be left a little longer
in peace--another door, the one opposite to Honor’s sleeping apartment,
had been briskly opened, and a female head clothed in a many-frilled
nightcap being protruded therefrom, a sharp, high-pitched voice was
heard--infinitely to the relief of the bride-elect--calling Miss Jenny
to order.

“Come away, you naughty girl,” cried Mrs. Clay, administering at the
same time a gentle shake to the delinquent. “Didn’t I tell you I
wouldn’t have it? Go back to bed directly, or father’ll give you a
whipping, so he will.”

At this terrible threat, and with the fear of bed in broad daylight (and
on such a morning too) before her eyes, Jenny began to whimper--a sound
which so moved the pity of the bride-elect, that before the awful
sentence could be carried into execution a sweet face, shrouded with
waving masses of light brown hair, made its appearance at the
half-opened door; and Honor, pressing the soft lips, that were a trifle
less rosy than their wont, on Jenny’s upturned forehead, said tenderly,

“Do what mother tells you, my sweetie. It won’t be long now before it’s
breakfast-time. And, Mrs. Clay, please not to think the children have
disturbed me, for I have been up and about for ever so long. What a
beautiful morning it is! Such a sunrise! I have been looking at it over
the Eastheigh Hills; and to think that this is the last time, the very
last time, that I shall ever sit at this dear little window, and hear
the birds singing in the trees, and the cows, with old Barbara after
them in her blue petticoat, coming in to be milked!”

The girl was in a melting mood that bright spring morning, for she
brushed a tear from her long lashes, when Mrs. Clay, in motherly
fashion, told her what a foolish child she was to be low-spirited on her
wedding morning. “It wasn’t like Honor,” she said, “to be
down-hearted.” And the good woman was right there, for the girl’s moods
were changeful as an April sky, and in another moment, stirred by a
sudden memory, the sweet lips were parted by a smile.

“I saw Joe Gregg,” she said, “come across the meadow just now, with such
a coat on his back! The tails trailing on the ground, and a nosegay as
big as his head stuck in his waistcoat! I hope he won’t be very absurd
at church, and make us laugh when we ought to be solemn.”

“Foolish fellow!” rejoined Mrs. Clay, laughing heartily as the idea of
the village idiot, one of the most harmless of his unfortunate kind,
obtruding himself and his hatchet-face and uncouth figure at the
marriage ceremony, presented itself to her mental vision. “And now, my
dear,” she added sensibly, “for goodness’ sake do put your nightcap on
again, and go to bed; you’ll be as pale else, when John sees you, as if
you’d had an illness; and white, you know, wants a colour. It’s very
trying, as I’ve always said, to the skin, is white;” and kind-hearted
Mrs. Clay, after this useful warning to the girl whom she had grown to
love almost as a daughter, retired to her own apartment, and silence
once more reigned throughout the narrow corridor.

The smile faded from Honor’s face as she returned to the low seat
beside the open window, and allowed her eyes again to wander over the
fair scene without. Over the broad meadows, stretching eastwards towards
the Paddocks, a filmy haze, light as the bridal veil of a disembodied
spirit, was lingering still--lingering till the jocund god of day,
“rejoicing as a bridegroom to run his course,” should lift it softly
from fair Nature’s face.

In other and more prosaic words, there hung--no uncommon circumstance--a
mist over the low-lying lands through which a certain little winding
river called the Bram pursued its devious course. The day--there was no
safer prognostic than that light and silvery nebulousness--would be a
glorious one, and the bonny bride of that same first of May was, it
might be hoped, fated to be another of the proverbially “happy” ones on
whom the sun’s sympathising rays had warmly shone.

The girl--so soon to be that thing which _man_ has made--a _woman_ (it
was simply a _female_ that the hand of God created)--gazed out upon the
peaceful scene--on the budding trees in which the loving birds were
twittering, on the path through the meadows, trod so often by the merry
children when she--scarcely more than a child herself--had headed their
joyous company in merry search of the dab-chicks’ nests lying peaceably
in the reeds beside the Bram, or of wild flowers, fresh and sweet,
cropping up through the long grass in the sunny meadows.

It was her wedding-day--her day of days--and yet something very like a
sigh broke from the Irish girl’s lips, and there was a moisture (could
it be the dew of tears?) upon her cheek. She was not unhappy--no, and a
thousand times no--she _could_ not be sorrowful with the love of a good
man assured to her, and with the promise of such a home as it was in
John Beacham’s power to give. She was certainly not unhappy. She had
promised to be John’s wife unhesitatingly, and with a grateful heart. He
had only done his promised bride justice when he had declared that she
was neither vain nor aspiring. Honor could not be ignorant of the fact
that she was beautiful, but of the power and the advantages of beauty
she knew as little as did Mrs. Clay’s two-year-old child. It could
hardly then be owing to a latent feeling that she was throwing her rare
loveliness away--casting, so to speak, her pearls before swine--that
Honor’s heart was at that moment heavy within her; and yet, could John
have looked on her at that moment--could he have seen the listless
attitude and the clouded brow of the girl he so fondly loved--he would
have been justified in reading repentance where he would have looked for
joy. And, as I said before, he would have been mistaken. There was
none--no, not even the shadow of a regret on Honor’s part for the
promises that had so firmly bound her to be a farmer’s wife. Only the
day before her spirits were as buoyant, and her heart as light, as in
the joyous days gone by; only the evening before she had, with all a
young girl’s natural pleasure in self-adornment, entered into the full
spirit of the _rôle_ in which her bridal costume was to play so
all-important a part. The wedding-dress, pretty and pure and tasteful,
although no hand more cunning than that of the humble Leigh artiste had
been employed in its confection, had been pronounced by the jury of
maids and matrons assembled to give judgment on its merits to be a
decided success; and Honor, if the truth _must_ be told, had been so
childish--should we not, however, rather say so womanlike?--as to place
clandestinely upon her fair head the wreath of orange-flowers (a real
London _cadeau_ from John), she blushing all the while for fear that any
living soul might know what a vain silly thing she was.

All these signs and symptoms being taken into consideration, I think we
are justified in the conclusion that Honor Blake did not actually
experience regret that she was about to render kind, prosperous John
Beacham the happiest of men. She was a trifle confused and bewildered,
perhaps, on that her marriage morning. In some way--how she could not
have explained--the conviction had come home to her that being bound in
wedlock means something more than new clothes, the congratulations of
friends, accession of dignity, and even than spoken vows. It was all
very nice and pleasant, that listening to pretty speeches, and
contemplating the simple presents with which her friends (they were not
numerous, and she had been so little in the world) had rejoiced the
heart and gratified the harmless vanity of the whilom nursery governess.
But agreeable as all this was, and novel, and soul-stirring, the time
came, as we have seen, when she began to look at the more serious side
of this, to her, vitally interesting question: took, in short, at the
eleventh hour, to overhauling her stock of comforts and necessaries
previous to entering the boat in which she and John were henceforth to
sail together. And the first question she put to her own heart was,
whether her store of love for the voyage, that promised to be a long
one, was sufficient not only to last out the time, but was moreover of a
quality to withstand the changes of heat and cold, and the many
unavoidable trials both of calm and of rough weather. In very plain and
simple language Honor, late as it was in the day, inquired of her own
heart concerning this matter. Did she in very sober and earnest truth
love as he deserved to be beloved the man to whom she was about to
plight her troth? Did she hang upon his words, and watch, as for a
glimpse of heaven, for his smile? Had she--ah! that was the test of
tests--pined for him in absence, and, pure and innocent though she was,
longed with shy, sweet blushes for the moment when considerate friends,
taking pity on the engaged lovers, would leave them to an undisturbed
and blissful _tête-à-tête_?

The reply to these home queries was not, I greatly fear, altogether
satisfactory, as how indeed could it be, when it was the near prospect
of that life-long _tête-à-tête_ which first aroused the spirit of
inquiry in Honor’s maiden breast? It was this prospect (could this have
been so, my reader, if Love were lord of all within her?) that dimmed
the lustre of her eyes, and cast a cloud over the sunshine of her
spirits.

For an hour and more she sat in the same place, looking forth into the
brightness of the morning, and hearing without heeding the murmurs of
busy life that each moment became more audible throughout the house. For
an hour and more she sat there, the light breeze fanning her flushed
cheek, and cooling the full and crimson lips, which ere another sun
should go down upon the earth would be part and parcel of another’s
wealth!

“What is the use of thinking?” she said half aloud, and rising with a
slight shiver, for the morning air was fresh, and her light
wrapping-gown afforded but a thin protection from the cold. “What is the
use of thinking? There is no use of tormenting myself when I ought to be
happy, in this stupid senseless way.”

And Honor was right. Use there could be none now in asking herself how
much she loved the excellent man who in all loyalty believed that he
possessed her whole, entire heart. She had not intentionally deceived
him; indeed this inexperienced girl was little likely to surmise whether
or not she had so deceived him. “Thinking” was, therefore, in her case,
“but idle waste of thought.” Nothing--_that_ at least was quite clear to
Honor--was farther from her wish than to alter her relations with the
generous lover, who, as the saying is, worshipped the very ground she
trod on. For nothing that the world could offer, so she told herself,
would she grieve or disappoint him; and so nothing remained for this
young woman, whom so many in her own degree, and of her own sex, were
envying for her good fortune, but to bestir herself, both mentally and
physically, and accept the good things that had been provided for her
with a grateful heart?

A little womanly vanity--could anything be more natural?--came to the
aid of John Beacham’s _fiancée_ as she braided the soft brown tresses
that the honest gentleman farmer was never weary of admiring. It would
never do, she thought, to look dull and _ugly_ on her wedding-day; so
she threw melancholy to the winds, and decked her face with smiles, and
called that busy little Jenny in, to hinder rather than to help the
important business of the toilet. Honor’s was not a selfish nature, and
when the children threw their arms round her neck, kissing her with more
zeal than discretion, and calling her their “sweet, their pretty Honey,”
she almost forgot the circumstance of the “new frock,” and returned the
truthful caresses in much of the spirit which dictated their bestowal.




CHAPTER VI.

NOT QUITE FOR MONEY.


“How like my mother to be patronising this wedding--just the thing she
is certain to do! That sort of popularity costs nothing--not five
shillings, or trust Milady for staying away.”

“O, but, Arthur, you forget the present,” said Kate Vavasour--“the
present that cost, O, _such_ a quantity of money!--mamma did not say how
much. But it’s a brooch like a bull’s-eye, only flat, with a white
stripe across it; and it came from the jeweller’s at Leigh, with several
others to choose from, and mamma kept the biggest. She said it was ‘just
the thing,’ but I can’t say that I admired it much.”

“I should think not,” said her brother scornfully--“a wretched Scotch
pebble as a wedding present for the wife of such a tenant as John
Beacham--a man whose father and grandfather were born and bred on the
land! Such a favourite of my father’s too;” and Arthur Vavasour, who
had just returned from a nine-months’ foreign tour, and who, in the
company of a pleasant and amenable tutor, had lost for a time the memory
of Lady Millicent’s “wholesome retrenchments,” made a mental resolve to
contrast her niggardly _cadeau_ to Honor Blake with an offering of his
own which would be more worthy of the bride’s acceptance. He and his
favourite sister Kate, a lively girl, but without any great pretensions
to beauty, and who, in Lady Millicent’s opinion, required a good deal of
keeping under, were sauntering through the once beautifully kept
conservatory, where now--infinitely to Arthur’s disgust--he could trace
the same “odious system of dirty economy” which everywhere met his eye.

“It isn’t nice, certainly,” Kate said, stooping while she spoke to pick
off the dead leaves of a neglected pelargonium; “I am afraid they will
all think it so mean. Much better to have given nothing. However, I am
glad we’re going; we so seldom do anything lively, that even this seems
quite a change. Besides, Atty, you will like to see the bride. She was
away last year with the Clay’s Farm children for change of air, after
they had scarlet-fever,” continued Kate, who was a great picker-up of
local news, a peculiarity in a young lady of “position,” for which Lady
Millicent’s treatment of her children was in a great degree the cause.
“You missed seeing her then, I remember. But, Arthur, do tell me, is
there no chance of the Castle growing livelier, do you think? What a
time it is now since things have been as they used to be! and then that
dismal half-mourning! It can’t be,” lowering her voice, “for my poor
father all this time. Don’t you think now, Arthur, that mamma will
surely make _some_ change at Gillingham soon?”

“Can’t say,” said Arthur, throwing the end of the cigar he had been
smoking upon the ill-cleaned mosaic pavement of the conservatory; “I
never attempt either to understand my mother or to make the slightest
guess as to what she is going to do. But about this wonderful beauty who
is to be made a wife of to-day--who is she? And what do people know
about her?”

“Not much, I believe. The Pembertons’ housekeeper, Mrs. Bainbridge, who
has lived with them for ages, and who is a great friend of the Clays,
recommended Miss Blake, who is her niece, to them as nursery governess
to their children, and--”

“Governess, indeed! By Jove, what will that class of people come to
next? However, I suppose it will be thought a civil thing to go and see
John Beacham turned off. There never was a better fellow either in his
line or out of it; and then, as I said before, he was such an uncommon
favourite of my father.”

“Yes, wasn’t he?” Kate said eagerly. She was a little thoughtless child
of twelve when Cecil Vavasour died; but the kind father, with his mild
face and winning voice, lived in her memory still, had taught her to
like and appreciate all that he, in his useful lifetime, had seemed to
value. “Wasn’t dear papa fond of the Beachams? How often he used to
trudge away over the fields, with the thick ash stick that stands in the
corner of the inner hall in his hand, to visit the Beachams at the farm!
Poor dear papa! he used to say that he placed John first of the few
honest men he knew. But, Arthur dear,” and she put her arm coaxingly
within her brother’s, “do you really think that Rhoda will come out this
year, and--”

“And will Miss Katherine Vavasour, as a natural sequence to that event,
beam out upon the London world the year following--a consummation so
devoutly to be wished? Upon my word, Kitty, though I am pretty well up
to your crafty ways and clever little dodges, you have come to the very
last person in the world who is likely even to give a guess at my lady’s
plans. And as to asking her--why she would think such questions,
especially from the heir-apparent, to the last degree indelicate,
presuming--in the worst possible taste, in short. But here comes
Horace. He can, perhaps, throw some light upon the matter. He has twice
the pluck that I have when it comes to tackling my lady. I don’t think,
for some reason or other, that she hates him quite as much as she does
me.--I say, old fellow,” he continued, as Horace Vavasour, a
fair-complexioned, intelligent-looking young man, came loungingly
towards them, with his hands thrust into his trousers-pockets, “do you
happen to know anything of the prospects of this cheerful family of
ours? Here is Kate, at sixteen and a half--isn’t that about the mark,
eh, Kitty?--naturally crazy to know when there is any chance of her
being married. Don’t laugh; it’s a serious business, as I have no doubt
Rhoda thinks too, though she hasn’t the brass, like you, to ask leading
questions on the subject. However, what do _you_ say it is to be?
London, or no London? Husbands, or no husbands? It is really time that
these poor girls should know their fate.”

Horace, thus appealed to, shook his head ominously. “I am as much in the
dark as you can be,” was his unsatisfactory exordium. “Milady will be
long enough before she either chooses confidants from among her
children, or holds a _conseil de famille_ as to their individual hopes
and wishes. In the mean time,” he added, stretching himself wearily,
“what a bore this life is! I declare I would rather break stones upon
the road than go on as we do at Gillingham. No creature except the
clergyman and the London lawyer ever asked to the house, and my mother
so awfully serious and gloomy! I declare, since the day when I was
supposed to have finished my education, and when old Collins took his
final leave with a handsome present of my father’s photograph as a
testimony of my lady’s regard and esteem, I have never once enjoyed the
unpurchasable luxury of a laugh. The best chance to get one is to spend
an hour with Thady Nolan in the stables. He’s an importation since your
time, Arthur, and I assure you, from personal experience, that you would
find his society quite a resource. He is full of genuine Irish
humour--quite a character in his way--and never, by any chance, takes
liberties.”

“I am glad,” Arthur said, “that my mother hasn’t reduced the stable
establishment to quite the same miserable footing as everything else
about this miserable place. Individually, it doesn’t so much signify to
me; not personally, I mean. When a man is going to be married--”

“Then it is true? O, Atty!” exclaimed Kate, and her eyes filled with
tears, for she loved that prodigal and _tant soit peu_ unprincipled
brother, of whose faults she knew so little, very dearly, and the idea
of his marriage was, in some undefinable way, a blow to her.

“_True!_ Of course it is. What was there besides for me to do? There was
that season in London, two years ago now--how time does fly!--when you
were all living so quietly in the country here, and when I--but there’s
no earthly use in going over it all again. All I ask of you is, whether
you, Kate, or you, Horace, or anyone that knows us both, would suspect
me of marrying Sophy Duberly, unless--unless I couldn’t help myself?”

“I can’t see that exactly,” Horace said. “She’s a very fine-looking
girl, and always jolly, with plenty to say for herself. I only wish that
I had the good fortune to make an impression on just such another. I
like your talking like a victim, Arthur! Heiresses to twenty thousand a
year are not as plenty as blackberries, and Sophy Duberlys don’t grow on
every hedge, to be had for the picking.”

“Well, that’s true enough, and I daresay it will all answer very well.
Sophy is, I believe, what is generally called a ‘nice girl,’ and has an
idea that she is fond of me, which may, or may not, be an illusion. Of
the two, father or daughter, I confess I think old Dub himself the best
fellow. I like the house too. There’s a _laissez-aller_ about it that
is perfectly delicious when contrasted with our home. There is not an
atom of _gêne_ at Thanes Court. One may say and do and look as one likes
at Mr. Duberly’s house. There are no cranky speeches; no domineering
determination that only one person in the house is to lay down the law.
I declare that if _our_ home had been the least like that--if our mother
resembled in anything that jolly old boy at Thanes Court--I, at the
unripe age of--under twenty-one--should probably not be about to tie
myself for life--a thing to which, at present, I feel not the least
inclination--to a young woman for whom at present--well, there is no use
in being over-confidential--if Sophy were as lovely as the Calipegean
Venus, or even as attractive and charming as John Beacham’s Irish bride,
I shall probably not look much at her face when she has been my wife a
year.

    ‘Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife,
     He would have written sonnets all his life?’”

he repeated to himself as he walked slowly away through a rarely-used
but admirably-proportioned billiard-room into an apartment on the ground
floor, which, by prescriptive right, he considered as his own.

“Poor Arthur!” Horace said, when he and his sister were left alone; “I
had no idea that he cared so little about her. I wonder what my mother
will say when she hears it is all settled?”

“I wonder, too. Be glad, I should think: but she won’t say so, and will
be angry because she was not told while it was going on. _You_ were, I
suppose, you close, ill-natured, unbrotherly boy! Of course, those long
letters from Atty while he was at Cannes, and which you kept so
provokingly to yourself, were all about Sophy Duberly. Now, tell me,
Horace--there’s a good, dear boy--didn’t he propose then? I am sure he
did, and that he told you all about what he said to Sophy, and what she
answered, and--”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Kate; _men_” (Horace was nineteen, and the _down_
was beginning to darken on his chin) “are not in the habit of wasting
letter-paper on such nonsense. Arthur made running at Cannes, of course,
but nothing was settled till he and the Duberlys met the other day in
Paris. I am sure that no one ought to wonder at his marrying. People
will stare, of course--I mean those who can’t look behind the scenes.
They will think it extraordinary that the heir to such a property as my
mother’s should marry when he is only one-and-twenty _for money_.”

“Not quite for money only. You said just now, yourself, that Sophy was
nice--”

“Did I? Well, so she is; and if I were half as good-looking a fellow as
Atty, I should look out for a girl a quarter as nice, with an eighth
part of Sophy’s expectations; and if she accepted me, I should think
myself a deuced lucky dog. Heigh ho! What an age it seems before the
examination time! I wonder how long my mother thinks one can endure such
a horrible existence as this.”

“It can’t last for ever,” Kate said; “and it is quite as bad for us as
it is for you; and yet you never hear either Rhoda or me lamenting over
our fate as you do over yours.”

“O, girls are different! Women are meant to live in the country, and
stay at home.”

It was not the first time that Katherine Vavasour had listened to the
enunciation of this popular aphorism, and, as usual, it provoked her
excessively. In her opinion, the “lines” that had fallen to Horace were
very pleasant compared to those hard ones which had been meted out to
herself and her sister. He was permitted a certain kind of liberty, had
a horse to ride, and provided that the hours for meals were not
infringed on, or the family-prayer bell neglected, he was allowed to go
and come pretty much as he liked. As regarded her daughters, however,
Lady Millicent’s family rules and arrangements were far more strict.
Since the simultaneous dismissal (for the flagrant offence of joint
matrimonial attentions) of Mr. Collins and Kate’s steady middle-aged
governess, Lady Millicent had deemed it her duty to still further
circumscribe the narrow circle of her daughters’ pleasures. She was a
woman who disliked trouble, so that a few “general orders,” such as that
_no_ books from the circulating library were to be read, and no walks
outside the park walls were to be taken, formed the staple of her very
stringent form of government. Against these retrenchments, as well as
against the daily dulness of their monotonous existence, Kate Vavasour
(Rhoda was made of more submissive stuff) was perpetually chafing. She
dreaded the moment, too, when Horace would be emancipated from the yoke
which so sorely galled her own youthful shoulders. His education had
been principally a home one, a private tutor having for the last three
years been busily employed at the Castle in preparing the younger sons
for the ordeal of a civil-service examination. Horace had been very
impatient of the home restraints which during those three years had been
imposed upon him. Often had he been seized with an almost irresistible
longing to fly from the tedious sameness, the almost unendurable
routine, of his home life. Had Lady Millicent been only tolerably
sympathetic--had she entered the least into their feelings--been but a
few degrees less hard, less self-engrossed, and less unwilling to allow
her children a few of the pleasures to which young flesh believes itself
to be heir--it is more than probable that Horace would have been less
anxious to escape from an existence which after all contained, as in
later years he was ready to acknowledge, so many of the elements of
happiness. That he did not so endeavour to escape was owing partly to
the affection of Horace Vavasour for his sisters, who were wont to
protest with tears that they could not endure their fate if he, the only
one who kept their house alive, were to desert them; and partly to the
_habit_ of submission which had grown with his growth and strengthened
with his strength. Before Lady Millicent’s second son also there was a
road in life marked out--a point in the horizon on which his eyes and
hopes were fixed. That point in the future was the competitive
examination for which he had been so long and diligently preparing
himself; that road in life was the one that led, through mental effort,
as a “government servant,” to distinction. The career chosen for Horace
Vavasour was that of a “public man;” how far an almost strictly private
education was calculated to fit him for that career may remain an open
question.




CHAPTER VII.

LADY MILLICENT CONDESCENDS.


Family prayers were over at the Castle. The ladies and gentlemen, who I
fear were very little the better for the ceremony, and the servants,
who, if they prayed at that time in the morning at all, would probably
have infinitely preferred doing so in their so-called “closets” than
under the eyes of their employers, had each and all risen from their
knees; and breakfast, never much of a meal, according to the young men’s
view of the matter, was in progress.

“A fine day for the wedding, eh?” remarked Arthur. “I’m glad you’re
going, ma’am; John is one of the best fellows going. I owe him some
attention for teaching me to ride. A deuced stick, too, I was at first,
and a precious deal of trouble I gave him. There is nothing like
beginning early though, and John was as patient as--”

“Well, as patient as what, or who?” asked Lady Millicent, noticing that
he hesitated--she being one who, in the smallest as well as the most
important occasions of life, never obeyed the valuable rule, _Glissez
mortels, mats n’appuyez pas_.

“O, I don’t know!” replied Arthur, who hated having what he said
investigated--torn into threads, as he called it--by his lady mother.
“Nothing particular. I believe, though, that I was going to say--as a
woman.”

“I daresay,” sneered Lady Millicent; “your experience in that line has
been too extensive for the simile not to strike you at once.”

Arthur bit his lip to keep down the retort that had risen to his tongue.
He was not so well disposed as he had a year before shown himself to be
to bear in a patient spirit the being snubbed and tyrannised over. A
lengthened absence, together with the flattering attention everywhere
shown to the heir-apparent of Gillingham--to say nothing of the
matrimonial engagement which made him feel so like a man--were all in
their different degrees responsible for the symptoms of rebellion that
were rife within him. Lady Millicent looked, too, according to Arthur’s
fancy, especially provoking on that bright spring morning. The almost
shabby “slight” mourning in which--for economy’s sake, as the world
supposed--it was the wealthy-widow’s pleasure to deck herself, looked
terribly out of keeping with the sunshine of the “glad new year,” and
with the bright fresh flowers (a cheap luxury) never absent from the
breakfast-table at Gillingham Castle, and which, on that especial
morning, were redolent of votive offerings to the first of May. It was
sad to think that at that breakfast of herbs (Lady Millicent did not
approve of stalled-ox-feeding so early in the day), and so soon after
the return of the first-born son, that son should be constrained to
strive--but happily not in vain--to keep his temper.

The hour of eleven had struck by the clock of the Switcham parish church
when, punctual to the moment, there was seen driving up the gentle
ascent leading to the picturesque old gothic building, Lady Millicent’s
open carriage, drawn by the powerful high-stepping pair of brown horses,
half-brothers, bred by John’s father, and sold by him ten years before
for a “long figure,” for the use of the Lady Millicent Vavasour. John
Beacham took an honest pride--aged animals though they were--in those
horses; and when from the elevated spot in the churchyard on which he
was standing he caught sight of their grand “tops,” and heard the rapid
footfall of the powerful thorough-breds on the gravelled road beneath,
the memory of his dead father rose up strong within him, and John, ere
he stepped forward hat in hand to welcome the liege lady of Gillingham,
passed his honest hand over his eyes, to brush away the moisture that
had gathered on their lids.

The little church, as Lady Millicent, with her two daughters, walked
slowly up the aisle, was filled to overflowing with eager sight-seers.
From the moment it became generally known that the great family from the
Castle had graciously condescended to honour John Beacham’s marriage
with their presence, public interest in that event had risen to its
height. Already the wedding presents graciously sent to the oldest and
most respected tenant on the Gillingham estates had been duly inspected
and admired, and the miniature bust in bronze of “the late lamented
Cecil Vavasour, Esq.,” a dozen or two of which had been cast by Lady
Millicent’s orders for such occasions as the present, had been duly
forwarded the day before as a mark of esteem to the owner of Updown
Paddocks, had been passed round among the friends and acquaintances
assembled at Clay’s Farm, and received its meed of approval.

The simple people were a little puzzled by the ponderous ornament
destined to grace the delicate throat of the bride. It was “milady’s”
gift, and therefore safe from either animadversion or suspicion; but,
under other circumstances, it is just possible that some few judicious
critics--the ladies especially--might have been tempted to pronounce
the “pebble” brooch, in its thin setting of pale chased gold, not only
an ugly but a parsimonious gift. That _noblesse oblige_ formed no
portion of Lady Millicent’s creed was a fact that in some way or other
had come to be, perhaps, dimly suspected by the little world over whom
she reigned. It would take a long time, however, and an enlarged
experience of her ladyship’s meanness, selfishness, and general
incapacity, before the _fact_ of those proclivities would become an
accepted truth by those whose fathers had lived in the good old “God
save great George our King!” days, and who had been brought up to
believe in the Vavasours of Gillingham. The memory of the good Squire
still lingered amongst them. There were stories yet extant of his
kindliness, his forgetfulness of self, his open-handed charity, and his
rare and simple common sense. What wonder, then, that with the savour of
his good deeds yet lingering about the widow, there should still be
found a few ready to respect where she respected, and willing to honour
those whom “milady” delighted to honour?

The church was then, as I have already said, crowded with people, when
Lady Millicent sailed graciously down the aisle, clad in the rustling
black-silk dress which the curtseying school-children had known so long,
and which had brushed their humble skirts so often. The bride was
momentarily expected, and when the excitement caused by Lady Millicent’s
entry had subsided, and she was comfortably seated in the rectory pew,
all heads were turned towards the door in momentary expectation of
another and a still more important arrival.

The manner of Miss Blake’s coming was well known to the initiated. There
were no high-stepping brown horses to convey _her_ to the
churchyard-gate; and if the arrival of the first performers in the
little drama were delayed, it was probably because the wheels of the
Leigh “fly” tarried in the narrow lanes (deeply rutted by the passage of
Farmer Clay’s wagons) which led up to the farm-house. It was an ancient
vehicle, and had been called originally, I believe, a barouche-landau,
which had been called into requisition to convey the bride and as many
of the Clay family as could conveniently be packed into it to the
village church that day.

“Make yourselves as small as you can, children, for fear of tumbling
Honor’s frock,” the good-natured farmer had said as he deposited his two
delighted little girls in the roomy carriage, and then, his own portly
person being perched on the box-seat, the equipage drove off. The party,
with the exception of the bride, who was rather pale and thoughtful, was
in high spirits; and if the Leigh “fly” did smell a trifle mouldy, and
if the busy hungry moths had drilled a few round holes in the dingy drab
lining, why what mattered it to them? It was none the less able to carry
bright Honor Blake to her bridal; none the less in the children’s eyes a
grand part of the brilliant pageant which would, for many a day to come,
render that sweet first day of May a bright spot in their memories.

“O, mother! if there isn’t milady’s carriage!” exclaimed Ruth, a rather
precocious young lady of ten, who had very unwillingly abdicated in
favour of that “owdacious” Jenny the honour and glory of holding the
bride’s bouquet at the altar; and Mrs. Clay, as she afterwards expressed
herself, was “struck all of a quiver” with the shock of perceiving that
the Castle carriage had arrived before them. Through the little iron
gate between the yew-trees, which was set wide open to receive them--and
very near to which Honor, in her agitation, did _not_ perceive the two
young men, Lady Millicent’s sons, standing to witness the rural
show--the simple _cortège_ passed. Mr. Clay, a sturdy yeoman-like
looking man, attired in a Sunday costume, in which he never either
seemed or felt at home, tucked the bride, to whom he was about to play
the part of father, tightly under his arm, and the rest following, they
walked slowly up the rising ground between the rows of commemorative
tombstones to the church.

There was a slight movement, and a faint murmur of “Here she comes,” as
the fair white-robed figure, her slight form half-concealed by a long
floating veil--neither Honiton nor Mechlin, yet it served the purpose
well--was first caught sight of, passing behind the old baptismal font.
The faint blush that had risen over neck and brow as Honor entered and
_felt_ the gaze of many eyes upon her deepened into crimson as she
neared the altar. Then a sudden change came over the clear complexion
which had been but a moment before glowing as a rose, and “from that
out,” as Mrs. Tamfrey, who was present, was afterwards heard to say,
“the bonny bird looked for all the world as if she had seen a ghost.”

As for happy honest John Beacham, he played, as is generally the
melancholy fate of bridegrooms, a very secondary part on the occasion.
“M.,” all-important as he really is, sinks in his bran new coat and
waistcoat, into something even less than insignificant by the side of
the peerless creature in her robes of innocence, with the symbolic
wreath upon her “shining hair.” No one but his mother thought much of
John as he stood side by side with “the Irish gurl,” and in a clear
manly voice pronounced the vows that bound him to her whilst life
should last. To the elderly woman, about to sink into the mild dignity
of dowagerhood, that tall, broad-shouldered man, with his thick wavy
hair, his clear blue eyes, and, as the worthy woman often boasted, his
“wholesome” skin, was a far more important personage than that “slip of
a girl” who had, at an age when he ought to have known better, made such
a fool and “ninny” of her only son. Her eyes, from the moment that he
entered the church, never for a moment left his face. The demon of
jealousy, which in the solitude of her home she had in some degree
successfully combated, returned with redoubled force at the sight of
John’s proud and radiant face, filled with a tenderness which gave quite
a novel expression to his sun-burnt features.

The ceremony was no sooner over than Lady Millicent, who was known to
take a great lady’s gracious interest in the domestic affairs of her
tenantry, came forward with extended hand and wished the young people
joy. The little speech which she made on the occasion was listened to
with the outward appreciation and respectful attention usually accorded
to the platitudes of the powerful. Possibly John Beacham, whose young
wife’s hand was trembling on his arm, would have preferred silent good
wishes to this outward and highly-flattering demonstration of goodwill.
Honor, too, blushing as she was beneath the gaze of a church-full of
wonder-seekers, would gladly have escaped to the cool vestry, whence, by
a quiet path beneath the old yew-trees, she and John would have gained
the neat new brougham which he had purchased for his bride, and which
was in waiting to receive her. But this was not to be. Not to be, at
least, until Lady Millicent had gone through the ceremony of alluding in
gratifying terms to her late husband’s interest in, and she might almost
say (Lady M. was certainly wonderfully condescending) her friendship
for, John; not to be till, holding the bride’s hand within her own (an
_honour_ which it is to be hoped that young woman fully appreciated),
she had expressed a gracious hope that Mrs. John would prove worthy of
her mission upon earth--namely, that of being a true and obedient wife,
and a devoted mother to the children with whom Providence might deign to
bless her union.

“A very neat and appropriate speech,” laughed Horace, as the two young
men sauntered out of the churchyard. “I should have liked to put in
something poetical and complimentary about the ‘bridal of the earth and
sky,’ for, by Jove! she looks a good deal too delicate and ethereal to
be John Beacham’s wife.”

“She is very beautiful, certainly,” Arthur responded. “I hope it will
answer; but somehow those sort of marriages don’t always end as well as
they begin;” and having thus lucidly delivered himself, they walked on
for a short while in silence.




CHAPTER VIII.

HONOR’S HONEYMOON.


“Nothing the matter, really, John. I am not ill, indeed--only stupid;”
and Honor, leaning on her husband’s arm, looked up into his face with
one of her sunniest smiles.

“Stupid! How’s that?” John said. “You were never stupid at the Clays’.
You were gay as a bird there, my darling. What’s come over you, my sweet
one? I hope you’ve got everything you want to make you happy?”

“Indeed I have, John,” said Honor, speaking with that smallest _soupçon_
of a brogue which made everybody wonder, so young had she been when she
left her native soil, how it was that the Celtic accent clung to her at
all. “Indeed I have, John. I am _very_ happy;” and she spoke so softly,
and pressed the arm to which she clung with such a tender loving force,
that John, entirely reassured, went on his way rejoicing.

Honor only said what she believed to be the truth, and yet, for all
that, her heart--although she could not have told you why--was heavy
within her. Perhaps it was the enforced idleness of her life--for
neither she nor John had anything to do at Ryde--which weighed upon her
spirits. It had been so very different at the Clays’. There was Ruthie
to teach, and little Jenny to pet and keep in order; to say nothing of
Tom--that terrible Tom!--whose frock and trousers were always, do what
you would, in the wash-tub; and Neddy, who was wise beyond his years,
and whose questionings on abstruse subjects were for ever taxing Honor’s
simple stores of knowledge to the utmost.

It might be, then, that she missed the avocations which kept her always
busy in her old home; and besides, she had so early seemed to have
exhausted all she had to say to John. They had talked over the kindness
of the Clays, and laughed together, just a very little, at Lady
Millicent’s grandiosity, which even Honor’s limited experience taught
her was slightly out of keeping with the nature of her gifts. The
trifling incidents of the wedding also--the abnormal and unexpected
ones, that is to say--had more than once, in the dearth of other topics,
formed cheerful subjects for conversation between the newly-married
pair.

“I was sure that Joe Griggs would do something extraordinary,” Honor
said, “when I saw him coming across the meadow with that great bunch of
yellow flowers stuck upon his coat. I little thought they were nothing
in the world but dandelions, and that he had brought them to give me in
the church. Mrs. Clay was quite vexed with me for taking them, but I
couldn’t bear to hurt his feelings; and if they did stain my frock it
didn’t signify much--I can turn the side-breadth, and then no one will
know anything about it.”

John Beacham was profoundly ignorant of the mysteries of a lady’s dress;
of “side-breadths” he knew no more than he did of Sanscrit, and he would
hardly have noticed a stain if he had seen it; but he did know--and what
was infinitely more to the purpose, he could appreciate--a delicate and
an unselfish trait in the woman that he had made his wife. He thought it
very “pretty” of Honor to accept the idiot’s offering, and so he told
her lovingly as they wandered together in the pleasant walks outside the
town, which in itself seemed to them both so infinitely dull.

Unfortunately for the success of their trip the weather proved very
unfavourable for honeymooning. The sun that had shone so brightly that
glad May-day at “home” seemed to have entirely forsaken the sea-shore,
along which John Beacham and his wife, for variety’s sake, sometimes
turned their steps. To judge of weather matters from the severity of the
cold, and the force with which the strong north-eastern blew upon “the
Island,” a second and a sterner winter than the last was visiting the
earth. The early leaves, nipped by the severity of the blast, hung brown
and withered on the twigs. Noses were suggestively roseate, warm shawls
were gathered closely round shivering forms, and the face of Nature was,
as it were, hidden behind a cloud.

Honor was very far from being a literary character; and yet--melancholy
to relate--she had not been more than three days a wife when she found
herself regretting that John was not more of a reading man. He could not
be called a dull companion, for he took a _real_ interest in the talk of
others, was easily amused, and both his remarks and replies were
sensible and to the purpose; but for all this, and though the scene and
their position were new, time--there could be no doubt about _that_
fact--did hang heavy at Ryde both with Honor and her husband. Sooth to
say, the latter was rather like a fish out of water at that sea-side
watering-place. The journey and the voyage thither, with that exquisite
Honor by his side, had been simply delicious, and the coming fortnight
would, he had doubted not, pass as a too short hour of perfect and
hitherto undreamt-of bliss. Too soon, however, the active-minded man, to
whom absence of employment was such an entirely novel phase of
existence, discovered that his short dream on the deck of the Ryde
steamer was not destined to be realised. His beautiful Honor was not one
whit less perfect, nor was his conviction that he was the happiest of
men less firm, than when he led her first within the gates of Paradise:
but--and there, in a word, lay the true cause of the evil--Ryde was not
Updown Paddocks--not the place where the interests of his life had so
long been centred; not the spot where the brood-mares, plump and
matronly, and the young stock, wild with youth and spirits, met his eyes
at every turn as he took his daily walks; not the spot, in short, where,
at every moment of his life, he had something to do, to think of, and to
project. Not to mince the matter, John Beacham--dearly and passionately
as he loved his wife--was, at the end of ten days’ holiday-time, sick to
death of the place to which he and Honor had betaken themselves to be
happy. Never in all his life had he found the days so long, never in his
experience had the wind howled and the sleet pelted during spring-time
as it did at Ryde during that memorable fortnight in the so-called
“merrie” month of May.

“I wonder what the yearlings think of this,” was John’s remark, one
bitter, blustering day, as he and Honor were boldly wrestling with the
breeze on the long wooden pier. “I only hope that Simmons has been
minding my orders. The worst of it is, that in these days understrappers
are all for having opinions of their own--a thing _I_ never was
allowed,” he added with a cheery smile, “when I was a youngster. I think
the old woman is about right in saying that everything is changed since
her time. I wonder, though, what _we_ should think of goings on if they
were to come back to what she remembers them fifty years ago.”

“We should find some of them very funny, I daresay,” said Honor,
laughing. “Dress, for instance. Now, I think Mrs. Beacham’s lace cap so
nice for an old lady, but--”

“Don’t call mother ‘Mrs. Beacham,’ Honey,” John said. “Honey” was a pet
name that he had bestowed upon his wife. It was _sweet_, he thought, and
delicate, and besides in the Bible it was written that “honey was good;”
so altogether it seemed to suit his little wife; and she, after
laughingly telling him that the _petit nom_ was still more Irish than
her own, answered to it as readily as though she had been called a
“Honey” from her birth.

“I want _my_ mother to be the same as if she was your own, Honey,” John
said. “She’s a good woman--a better, to my thinking, never trod the
ground. But she’s cranky sometimes. I can’t say that she isn’t _that_.
You’ll have to bear with her, Honey, I don’t doubt, now and then; but
you won’t mind that, pet? One must make allowances for old people; they
get into ways of their own, you know, and it isn’t easy for them to
change. Indeed, I’m not sure,” he added musingly, “that, after a certain
age, anyone is much the better for altering the ways that they’ve got
used to.”

“After a ‘certain age’! Ah, now, John,” Honor said in a tone of playful
reproach, “sure you’re not going to say that you’re not the better for
not living lonely like at the Paddocks? I only hope though--ah, you
don’t know, John, how much I wish it”--and she spoke with a sad kind of
earnestness--“that your mother--I’ll not call her Mrs. Beacham, if you
don’t like it--will not think that you are the worse for change. I know
I’m foolish, John, and young and inexperienced; but I mean to try and
please her. I hope she’ll like me. Do you think she will, John?” and
she looked up wistfully in her husband’s face, awaiting his reply.

“_Like you?_” he repeated with an amused laugh at the intense absurdity
of the doubt implied. “Like you! I should think she would indeed! Why,
Honey, you’ll be her daughter, child--think of that!--and the light of
the home that never had a daughter in it before; and you’ll be petted
and made much of; and those pretty little hands of yours won’t have
anything to do but to make pictures of the trees and flowers as you’re
so fond of doing; and sometimes, especially of a Sunday evening, when my
mother loves a hymn dearly, you’ll sing to us in that warbling way you
used to do at Clays’. I haven’t forgotten--no, nor I never shall, if I
live to be a hundred--the first time I listened to your voice, Pet. It
was just a simple nursery song to please the children--not much to speak
of, I daresay, either as to words or music--but somehow or other, I
don’t know how it was, it went to _my_ heart as straight as an arrow
from a bow.”

They were on the pier still--that cold shelterless Ryde Pier--the wild
wind whistling about their ears, and toying with Honor’s drapery in a
manner more rudely familiar than was altogether agreeable to that young
lady’s feelings. At that moment the vision of certain peaceful
lanes--lanes where the nightingales sang, and the clematis twined about
the hawthorn-trees--flashed across her tenacious memory, and filled her
mind with pleasant thoughts of home.

“Anything would be better than this,” she said to herself, as the
nor’-wester, tearing round the extremity of the pier, so nearly swept
her off her legs that she was forced to cling convulsively to her
husband’s strong arm for protection.

John’s last words, and the cheery confidence with which he spoke of the
success of their _solitude à trois_, from the contemplation of which she
had hitherto nervously shrank, contributed not a little to her
conviction that, all things considered, they would be better off at
Updown Paddocks than listening in that half-deserted town to the
melancholy murmur of “the sad sea waves.”

“What’s in your little head now--eh, Honey?” asked John, when the hearty
laugh caused by the wind’s boisterous behaviour had subsided, and they
were trudging calmly homeward to their early--that is to say, their
six-o’clock--dinner.

“Nothing particular, only--”

“Only what? Out with it, pet,” persisted John, who could not help
nourishing a faint hope that Honor, like himself, might be growing
home-sick, and was only watching for an opportunity of making known her
weakness--“out with it. I shouldn’t wonder now,” he continued archly,
“to find we were both thinking of the same thing.”

Honor reddened up to the very roots of her hair. She was an inveterate
_blusher_. A word, a look, nay even a passing thought flitting across
her own pure mind, would send the red blood coursing under her delicate
skin. This peculiarity, which formed one of her greatest charms, was a
source of constant annoyance and mortification to the young wife. It was
so tiresome to betray what otherwise no one would know anything about
but herself; so provoking, that John might be guessing now that she was
harbouring a wish that was not altogether flattering to his self-love.
She was longing, though she would not have told him so for worlds, to go
away from Ryde. The strangest feeling of depression--a depression for
which she could not in the least degree account--was creeping over her
spirits. To analyse her sensations would have been for this young girl
simply an impossibility. That the aspect of life and the things of life
had, in some inscrutable manner, changed for her, she was, after a vague
fashion, aware. There was a shade over her future. An extinguisher
seemed, by some invisible hand, to have been placed over the bright
point in the horizon, where hope had before shone with such undimmed
lustre. Honor was far too untaught in the mysteries of our complex human
nature to understand, in even a limited degree, why the sunshine of her
life--in spite of John’s love, her matronly dignity, and her new
clothes--seemed suddenly to have faded out. How was this young girl,
this almost child, to surmise that the number of newly-made wives who go
through the like ordeal is legion? Sooner or later, in a greater or in a
less degree, the same flagging of the spirits, the same
utterly-unexpected and hard-to-be-endured _tædium vitæ_, oppresses the
young spirit which had soared, alas, too high, and had dropped to earth
so quickly. Time and “habit” may, or may not, according to the
idiosyncrasy of the sufferer, produce beneficial results; but who can
deny that the condition is a critical one? Who will not be found willing
to agree that this probable condition of mind should form matter for
serious reflection before the irrevocable words are spoken which bind
one woman to one man so long as their lives shall last? There is an
easy-to-be-believed-in “flatness,” a flatness very depressing to the
female mind, when _the_ one great event--the epoch to which all the
daughters of Eve naturally look forward--is past and over, and the wife
has _quietly_ to learn whether or not she is “dearer than the bride.”
Anticipation--highly raised, and coloured by the wondrous charm
inalienable from the unknown--is at an end for ever; and fruition, in
nine cases out of ten, makes poor amends for the loss of hope’s gay
pleasures, and the absence of the joy which anticipation brings.

But, in addition to this, there were other and peculiar reasons why
Honor should be unsettled, at least, if not discontented, in her mind.
She had made the discovery that, in more ways than one, that excellent
John, of whom before marriage she had comparatively seen so little, was
unsuited to her! Beyond a mutual liking to be out of doors, and a
decided fondness for dogs and horses, Honor could not perceive that they
had a single taste in common. He liked music after a fashion; that is to
say, it gave him pleasure to hear her sing a simple ballad, such as “The
banks of Allan Water,” or the “Soldier’s Tear”--old-world songs, of
which he liked to listen to the words when Honor took especial pains
clearly to enunciate them for his benefit. Of modern poetry--of the
“whispered balm,” the “music spoken,” which thrilled through Honor’s
bright and teeming fancy to her heart--John Beacham was profoundly
ignorant. Of Tennyson he knew little, save his name; while of the
beauties of Longfellow he was as ignorant as of the scattered pages of
the Sibyl’s prophecies.

Now it chanced that this pretty, ambitious Honor, who, pending any
positive information concerning her birth, had _thought_ herself into
the belief that she was born a “lady,” had arrived at the not wholly
irrational conviction that her husband’s literary tastes (for a
gentleman) might with advantage be more extended and refined. She was
angry with herself for having come to this conclusion. John was so kind
and thoughtful, so tender of her feelings, and so unwearied in his
efforts to amuse her, that Honor felt quite wicked to have discovered in
him even one shortcoming; and the consciousness that she was not so
happy as he hoped to see her made the poor child feel positively guilty.
That dear, good John! How kindly he had taken her about! What a number
of excursions (getting wet through more than once in consequence) he had
indulged her in! And if the weather had been but fine, would there have
been a single nook, both in the Island and outside it, that the
newly-married pair would not, during the passing of those uneventful
days, have made acquaintance with?

If the weather had but been fine! Ay, there was the rub; but there also
lay, in some sort, the way out of their difficulties.

“I was thinking how unlucky we have been,” Honor said, when the quick
blush had faded from her cheek, and the glance of deprecation had been
withdrawn. “Not one single fine day have we had since we left
Sandyshire! I wonder if it has rained and blown so much at home. O my
poor feather!” she murmured piteously (for they were by this time within
the narrow entrance of their cottage lodging, and Honor had taken off
the little hat with which the wind and spray had been making havoc, and
was twirling it with an air of half-comic dismay upon her fingers),--“my
poor feather! and such a beauty as it was when it came home from Leigh!”

She was a child still in her love for new toys and the pretty trifles
that adorn a woman; and almost a child she looked as she stood there
stroking the pheasant’s breast (pheasant-plumage was the last new thing
in hat-trimmings that had, at this period, found its way to Leigh), and
pouting her rosy lip in simulated sorrow.

John Beacham was eminently “matter-of-fact,” a quality which goes very
far towards the making of common sense. He believed Honor to be really
fretting over her feather, and he comforted her accordingly.

“Never mind about the hat, Honey,” he said, after pressing his lips on
the fresh rounded cheek that was so temptingly at hand. “We’ll go home
and get another. Hats and feathers wear twice as long in Sandyshire. The
sea air is the deuce and all to pay for spoiling things. What do you
say, pet? Shall we see if the weather ain’t better at the Paddocks? This
place is all very well, and I’ve been as happy in it--well, as happy as
a king, if a king ever is happy, which I’m doubtful of, unless it’s in
the honeymoon; but home is home after all, and I--don’t laugh, pet;
you’ll feel the same one day yourself--never can manage to feel at home
anywhere else.”

“I didn’t laugh at you, John,” Honor said, passing her arm coaxingly
within her husband’s. “I was only pleased to be going home. I believe
I’m just tired of having nothing to do--you know you always called me a
busy little body--and besides, I want you to go back to the pretty
beasties you are so fond of. There’s Lady Bell; you can’t deny now,
John, that you’re dreadfully wrapped up in Lady Bell! I’ve caught you
more than once wondering what the baby would be; and then there’s the
something Dove--what do you call her?--the beautiful gray mare with the
wicked eye, that--”

“Never mind the mare,” put in John hastily; “and, Honey, mind this, I’m
not wrapped up in anything but you. I shall be glad to see the mares
again, but if you care to stay--”

“But, John, I don’t care to stay; I would rather, a thousand times, go
home; I want to begin my life--our life together--at the Paddocks. And
there’s your mother too--your mother must be so lost without you. She
said to me the very last thing: ‘Don’t keep John too long away; nothing
goes on well without the master’s eye, and time lost isn’t so easy found
again.’”

John Beacham laughed. There was his mother all over in those trite
sentences. It was so like her, too, to mix up business with the _fade_
sentimentality (as the old woman, had she known the words, would have
termed it) of the wedding-day.

“My mother knows tolerably well what she is about,” he said, “and
there’s often plenty of wisdom to be picked out of those dry sayings of
hers. I’ll be bound now she’s counting the days till we come back; I can
see her as plain now as if I was at home” (and John grew quite
enthusiastic as the _homely_ prospect rose up before him): “I can see
her giving out the yellow soap for the house-cleaning, and keeping the
maids up to their duty--ah, she was always a good one for that--and then
off to the parlour to dust the ornamental china with her cambric
handkerchief. Dear old mother! She mayn’t be one of the tender sort--not
what I call a crying kind of woman--but she’s good at heart, though I
don’t remember--no, not even when my father died--I can’t say I do, that
she what you may call shed tears. She may have done so, of course, and I
not know it; but to the best of my belief my mother is just the kind of
woman not to.”

It was characteristic of John Beacham, and of his extreme correctness
and scrupulosity of speech, that after delivering himself of this
interesting family diagnostic, he seemed somewhat uneasy in his mind,
and as if not thoroughly satisfied that he had spoken no more than the
exact and literal truth. It was characteristic too of his wife, and of a
habit which was hers of putting _this_ and _that_ together, that she
read to herself (all unwittingly, for the accusation of perusing
“character” would have been received by a laugh of incredulity) not only
in John’s cautious ways, but in the proof just adduced of her
mother-in-law’s lack of tenderness, elements of future discomfort for
herself. Visions of this _maîtresse femme_, stern, thrifty, and
uncompromising, darkened her mental vision. Ever since her engagement to
John, Mrs. Beacham had been, to a certain extent, an object of dread to
the quick-witted girl, who felt instinctively that she would never be
cordially welcomed, save by its master, to the old farm-house. She saw
her now, in her mind’s eye, with that symbolic piece of yellow soap in
her bony hands--cold, square-cut, neat, and clean. Very, ay, terribly
cold she must be, Honor thought, or she would have wept _sometimes_ in
the years that John had known her; Mrs. Beacham must--so decided the
April-natured girl, to whom tears and smiles came both so
readily--either have been blessed with a very happy life, or with very
limited powers of feeling. It was pleasanter on all accounts to
attribute the insensibility of her fellow-woman to the former cause; so
she said in her gentle acquiescing way:

“Your mother is very fortunate in having known so few troubles; I think,
though, that crying or not crying has a great deal to do with people’s
constitutions. I cry dreadfully easily: I shall try not, when Mrs.
Beacham--I beg your pardon, John--when _mother_ sees me. She would think
me such an awful little goose. But about going home, John,” she went on
after a pause, during which her husband still continued looking silently
at the empty grate; you see, he was so very anxious that Honor should
not be led by him to return a day sooner than she felt inclined. “About
going home; suppose we write and say we’re coming--_you_ would like it,
I know quite well, and I shall be so glad to see the roses in the dear
old garden that you are so fond of. They will all be in blossom soon,
and then the new greenhouse, and all the pretty new flowers--”

“And the new _pianner_, and _chaiselong_, and sofa table,” John said
slily--“you’ve got it all to see, Honey. I’ve had such a pretty sunny
room new furnished for you--a room that my mother never used nor cared
for. I don’t know how it was,” he continued musingly, “but she certainly
never _did_ care for that room. And yet it looks to the south, and opens
out upon the garden. Windows down to the ground, you know, and yet not
exactly to the ground; for there is a flight, or rather two flights, of
old stone steps, that meet together in a sort of little balcony at the
top; and the balustrades are iron, all as old as old can be, and covered
thick with honeysuckles and roses. Yes, I feel sure that you will like
your room, Honey, and be as happy in it, I hope, as a little bird.”

Honor felt sure of it too; it would be so delightful to step out among
the pinks and roses in that dear old-fashioned garden at the Paddocks.
She had only been there once--once on an occasion that it was not easy
to forget, namely, when she had been driven over from Clay’s Farm by
John to be inspected and pronounced judgment on by the formidable old
lady in the black-silk dress, who watched her with such a keen-eyed
scrutiny, calling thereby so many painful blushes to her burning cheeks.

Those days of trial were happily over now. According to John--and Honor
placed unbounded confidence in her husband’s judgment--there was no
reason for the nameless alarm which had often filled her mind at the
idea of sharing the home of John Beacham’s mother. By degrees, and
partly moved thereto by the springing trustfulness of youth, the young
wife had learned even to think with pleasure of that other inmate of her
new home, whose affection she hoped to win, and to whose comfort it was
her firm intention to devote herself.

       *       *       *       *       *

“So that’s all settled,” said John, drawing a long breath, as he thrust
his writing-desk from him, and threw up his big muscular arms for what
he called a “stretch.” “Leave this at ten; strike across country; after
the voyage to Reading, and--yes, that’s exactly it--be home for my
mother’s tea at seven. Won’t she be glad to get the letter, that’s all!
And sha’n’t I be glad to tell her that I’ve got the sweetest, to say
nothing of the prettiest, wife that ever a fellow was blest with?”

“And your mother’ll say you spoil me,” Honor said, while a sigh
struggled with a smile for mastery. “You mustn’t be making too much of
me, John. You’ll be having me, like little Tommy Clay, crying for I
don’t know what, one of these days, if you don’t take care.”

“God bless you, my Irish darling!” exclaimed John enthusiastically, for
the slight Celtic accent in which his young wife spoke made her words
sound very sweet and winning to his ears. “God bless you! and while I
live, and after it pleases Him to take me, may you be as happy, dearest,
as you deserve to be!”




CHAPTER IX.

THE WELCOME HOME.


A fortnight, minus two days, had passed since John Beacham was married,
and once more, on the occasion of the return of the bride and bridegroom
to their home, all Switcham was on the tiptoe of expectation. At the
little wayside station, almost a private one for the accommodation of
“the Castle,” few trains throughout the day were in the habit of
stopping. There was one at 7.10 P.M., a fact to which the time-table and
_Bradshaw_, those sworn enemies to indiscreet surprises, bore useful
witness; and as by that train the bridal party was by the Switchamites
fully expected to arrive, a considerable crowd had (when the down
passengers were due) assembled round and about the station, ready, with
more heartiness than good taste, to bestow on the returned travellers a
noisy and a cordial welcome home.

Meanwhile John and his pretty wife had spent the greater part of the day
in London, enjoying, amongst other inexpensive pleasures, the
apparently inexhaustible one of looking in at the tempting windows of
the West-end shops. It was Saturday afternoon, and the carriages, as was
usual on that day, were pretty well filled with passengers. Honor and
her husband had already taken their places, the first bell had been
rung, and only one seat remained unappropriated in the compartment which
they occupied, when a handsome, distinguished-looking young man, whose
face Honor thought she had seen before, came slowly sauntering along the
platform. He glanced in a careless manner towards the carriages as he
passed, but his eye chancing to catch sight of John’s honest sun-burnt
face, he stopped, and nodding familiarly, asked the latter if there was
a vacant place.

“Plenty,” John said cordially.--“Make a little room, Honey. That’s
it.--Quite well, sir?”--shaking hands cordially with the new-comer, whom
he introduced to his wife as “the young Squire.”

“You must excuse me,” he went on, speaking with the cheery voice and
pleasant smile that were among the various causes of the well-known
horse-breeder’s popularity,--“you must excuse me for calling you so.
I’ve known you ever since you was such a little chap, and your noble
father” (John’s ideas of nobility were somewhat confused, inasmuch as
the simple fellow was weak enough to believe in the “patent” of a good
man who “fears God, and loves his neighbour as himself”)--“your noble
father was ‘the Squire’ before you, sir, and we wouldn’t like the title
to die out.--I have known this gentleman, my dear,” turning to Honor,
who was blushing crimson behind her little coquettish veil, “ever
since”--suiting the action to the word--“he was _that_ high.”

Arthur laughed. The train was going at express speed now, so that
conversation was carried on under difficulties. “You must have had
wretched weather during your excursion,” he said, addressing himself
less exclusively to Honor than he would have done had she been exactly
in his own position in life. He was, as I have more than once said, a
very good-looking young gentleman, and being besides unfortunately
endowed with the often dangerous gift, described by one of the most
brilliant of French novelists as _l’œil à femmes_, he was a little in
the habit of _bonnes fortunes_. Honor, too, was looking wonderfully
pretty, as she sat opposite, with lowered eyelids, colouring under the
pleasing consciousness of being gazed at and admired. Arthur was not
much troubled with shyness, but for some reason, or other he did not
find it quite easy just then to talk to John Beacham’s wife.

“Well, I can’t say that the sun did trouble us much,” John said: “as I
told Honor there, she might have left her parasols and sun-shades
behind her. Such a fortnight as it’s been I never knew before, for the
time of year. We’ve come back a day or two before time; but we were half
afraid the old lady would find it dull by herself at the Paddocks, to
say nothing of the stock,” he added, laughing. “Honor tells me sometimes
that she believes I care more for the mares and foals than I do for kith
and kin.”

“Ah, now I didn’t say quite that, John,” Honor said in a very low tone;
but Arthur caught the words and replied to them:

“I’m sure you didn’t, Mrs. Beacham, and John will be forgetting his
out-of-door amusements altogether, now that he’s got something better
than kith and kin at home. I only wish that we were half as well off at
the Castle. The old house has grown more melancholy than ever since I
went away. By Jove, what a county it is! No hunting--no
neighbourhood--nothing earthly to be done!”

“Why don’t you take to breeding?” John asked; “there’s an interest for
you at once. Manage one of your own farms, and have plenty of young
stock, and, take my word for it, you’ll be all right then.”

Before Arthur could make any reply to this characteristic piece of
advice, the train had slackened speed, and looking out, he announced
that they had arrived at Switcham. It was, as I before remarked, a small
unpretending station, very quiet as a rule, which made the crowds
assembled in and about it all the more remarkable.

“What _can_ be going on?” said Honor. “John, look at those people. Maybe
the Queen is coming along the line;” and she looked out curiously upon
the throng, as the long train slowly rolled on towards it.

Suddenly there was heard a shout--the welcome cry of a hundred tongues,
as the bride’s fair face was recognised, and John Beacham, the man whom
both rich and poor loved and respected, was known to be once more
amongst them. Honor drew back, embarrassed and distressed.

“O, John! it’s because of our coming home,” she whispered; but John was
too busy, and, if the truth must be told, too pleased at this public
reception, to be very ready with his sympathy.

“Switcham! Switcham!” shouted the bustling official, as he threw open
the carriage-door; and in a moment John was on the platform, his hands
full of packages, and a broad smile of unmitigated happiness lighting up
his honest face.

“Can I be of any use? Hadn’t you better take my arm?” Arthur said. He
spoke in the soft conventional tone which the constant mixing with what
is called “good society” renders habitual, but to Honor, at that moment
of (to her) real distress, it seemed the confidential whisper of a
friend, and the gentle intervention of a champion.

“Make way!--Will you be so good?--A little on one side, there’s a good
man,” urged Arthur, pressing forward with John Beacham’s bride upon his
arm, and addressing certain individuals amongst the complimenting crowd,
who allowed their curiosity to get the better of their good breeding,
with an impertinent amenity that was not without its effect. “Stand
back, please.--That’s all right.--This is your brougham, is it not?” to
Honor, who, pale, bewildered, and overcome, was looking round helplessly
for her husband.

“O, you needn’t expect Beacham yet,” said Arthur, laughing; “he is
shaking hands with everybody, right and left. That’s what comes of being
popular. It would be long enough before all those fellows wanted to
shake hands with me. Ah, there he is! You will let me see you safe into
the carriage? By heavens! what are all those fellows going to do?” he
exclaimed, as a number of young men and boys, who had crowded round the
brougham, gave evident tokens of preparing for an ovation. Already the
coachman--one of John Beacham’s most trusted retainers--was off his
box, and had taken his professional stand by the head of the powerful,
high-stepping bay mare, whose traces were hanging loosely at her sides,
and who was beginning to manifest very decided symptoms of impatience.
Honor was greatly agitated--her nerves, like all those of persons who
_feel_ deeply, were not strong--and the shout of welcome which had
brought tears to her eyes, and a _globus hystericus_ to her delicate
throat, was still tingling in her ears. Arthur felt her hand tremble,
and her breath come quick and pantingly from her parted lips. He feared
she was going to faint, and in his exasperation made matters worse by
swearing at the crowd, and devoting to perdition the authors of her
annoyance.

At that moment (the whole affair had not occupied many minutes) John
Beacham, hot, red-faced, and happy, made his appearance. He laughed
heartily, having no suspicion of his wife’s distress, at what was going
forward.

“Fire away, boys!” he cried to the strong men who had already taken the
Wild Woman’s place in the shafts. “Rather you than me, this warm day,
anyhow!--Jump in, Honor;” and then, looking round at his wife, he saw
with dismay how pale she was. “Never mind, Pet; they’re good fellows,
and they won’t be long about it.--Now then, away with you!--Good-bye,
Mr. Vavasour;” and Arthur, standing by, his eyes fixed on the white
frightened face within the carriage, saw, as in a dream, the laughing,
shouting throng, and in the midst of it, moving slowly onward, the
dark-green brougham that bore the lovely Honor to her home.

“By ----” he muttered to himself, as he gathered up the reins of his
dog-cart, “to think that such beauty as that should be wasted on a
boor!”




CHAPTER X.

HOW THE “OLD LADY” TOOK IT.


It would be hard to say whether gratified maternal pride or a perhaps
natural jealousy was uppermost in Mrs. Beacham’s mind when she saw from
her parlour window the uproarious advent of her belongings. It was
delightful to think how popular John was,--for what but the respect and
affection in which he was universally held could, in her opinion,
account for the great amount of bodily exertion attendant on dragging a
heavy carriage a mile and upwards to the very door of the Paddocks? It
was pleasant also to reflect that she was the mother of one whom the
world delighted to honour; but with that reflection came the alloying
thought that another, _id est_, the “Irish gel” sitting
complacently--for so Mrs. Beacham pictured her--by the side of the
infatuated John, was to come in for far more than her merited share of
popular attention.

The house from which the stern old lady watched the return of her son
from his first lengthened absence was a long, rambling, one-storied
abode, built of brick whose hue was mellowed by age, and with its south
front covered almost to the roof with two centenarian pear-trees, the
fruit of which was renowned for its size and flavour throughout the
whole country-side, and to which, moreover, was owing the name of
“Pear-tree House,” that had, time out of mind, been the appropriate
designation of John Beacham’s home. From the elevated site of that home,
those within, who chanced to be gazing from the south windows, could
obtain an excellent view of what was passing in the Paddocks outside.
They could trace the well-kept private road winding through the bright
green meadows, which were portioned off from each other by shade-giving
hedgerows, and dotted with white freshly-painted gates. Many a time had
Mrs. Beacham, knitting in hand--she could make a stocking blindfold, as
the good woman had been heard to boast--sat at the window of the small
low-roofed parlour (the parlour with the heavy beams across the ceiling,
which she never would allow to be modernised and made smooth), watching
the coming of her son--listening for the sound of his well-hung
dog-cart, or the swift footsteps of the weight-carrying thoroughbred
bearing his owner home, after a hard day’s exercise, to his evening
meal.

The news that “the master” was on the road, that the Wild Woman had been
left behind at Switcham, and that the carriage was being _drawed_ home
by the boys from the village, was not long in reaching Pear-tree House.
It was through the means of Letty the parlour-maid, a young woman given
to holding evening converse with smart serving-men over out-of-sight
palings, that the intelligence arrived at Mrs. Beacham’s expectant ears.

“Coming home without the horse? Stuff and nonsense!” exclaimed the old
lady, rising from her seat, however, with considerable alacrity, to
ascertain the truth or falsehood of Letty’s report. She was not kept
long in suspense. Round the thick screen of laurel-bushes there was
heard a confused sound of human voices, shouting, laughing, and
_hooraying_,--then the carriage, with John and Honor inside, was drawn
up with a rush to the door, and “the master,” much moved with happiness
and gleeful excitement, sprang out upon the hall steps.

“Well, mother,” he said, kissing her cheek with warm affection, while
his arm was thrown round the old woman’s waist, “what do you think of
this start? Jolly, ain’t it?” And in the exceeding delight of the moment
he forgot his precious Honor altogether!

She was well content, poor child, to be overlooked. It had required a
strong effort on her part not to mar her husband’s enjoyment by any
display of foolish womanly weakness. She felt faint and nervous, and the
painful shrinking from her first interview with the dreaded autocrat of
Pear-tree House had returned with redoubled force as the crisis of
arrival drew nearer and more near. She had made no sign, however, of her
distress, and had even contrived, in the fear that John might make the
uncomfortable discovery that she was less happy than himself, to summon
the ghost of a smile to her pale and quivering lip.

They were standing together--those three who fully expected that all the
years of their future lives would be passed together--on the broad,
well-worn stone steps leading to the entrance-door of the house. Mrs.
Beacham had returned her son’s embrace with interest. There was for the
moment unmixed pleasure in seeing his well-loved face again; but,
because of that very pleasure, her welcome to Honor was stiff and
ceremonious. A touch of the small cold hand with her unbending fingers,
and a kiss on the pale cheek that grew paler still under the infliction,
was all the greeting bestowed by John’s mother on the daughter he had
brought home to her.

“Three cheers for the missus!” shouted John’s volunteer team, whereupon
the air rang with the loud hurrah that only British throats can give.
Inspired by the near prospect of the strong ale which they foresaw would
be forthcoming from the far-famed Pear-tree cellar, not a boy or man
amongst them spared his lungs, and twice and again, each time more
deafening than the last, burst forth the ringing cheer, till even John
was fain to put his fingers to his ears, and to cry, with a laugh,
“Hold, my friends; enough!”

“I’m sure, my good fellows,” he began, when the tumult had in some
degree subsided, and the necessity of returning the compliment by a
speech was evidenced by the expectant looks of the bystanders, “I’m sure
that my wife is uncommonly obliged to you.” (His _wife_! thought Mrs.
Beacham senior, who, having hitherto been considered in the light of
“missus” at the Paddocks, had taken the compliment to herself.) “My
wife,” repeated John, laying what poor soured Mrs. Beacham considered an
insulting stress upon the obnoxious word,--“my wife has, I am sorry to
see, retired. She is not very strong, and the journey has knocked her
up; but another time--”

“At the christening of little master, eh?” cried a shrill voice from the
very centre of the crowd; whereupon there was a laugh--one of those
rude, coarse, blustering laughs with which untaught human nature, before
it has learnt to discriminate between wit and humour, erects the sole
form of joke which it is capable of understanding.

John looked about him in dismay. It was dreadful to think that
Honor--his delicate blushing Honor--should have overheard, and been
shocked by, that horrible allusion. For the first time since he had
known her it was a relief to find that she was not by his side; he only
hoped that she had gone upstairs--to bed--anywhere rather than run the
risk of being wounded by such coarse, such premature remarks.

“I have been more gratified than I can well express,” John went on to
say, and briskly enough this time, for he wished to get the whole thing
over, and to have his house to himself, “by the flattering manner in
which you have welcomed us home again. I see a great many old friends’
faces among you, and I hope one day to see your wives’ faces--and may
you all be as happy as I am! There is plenty of ale, thank God! in the
cellar, and as cheering is thirsty work, to say nothing of coming up
here against collar this warm day, I hope you’ll all accept a glass
apiece, and then go back and set the bells of Switcham Church a-ringing.
I’m not much of a hand at a speech, and so, as it’s getting late, and
we’re all pretty well tired, I shall wish you a very Good-Night.”

He shook hands heartily, after this delicate hint, with those that stood
nearest to him, and the crowd, eager to taste the reward of their
exertions, caused no further delay by any lengthened expression of
applause. In a few minutes all was peaceful outside the south front of
the old house. There was no sound save the faint rustling of the wind
among the branches, and the last twitter of the birds ere they nestled
to their nightly sleep. Only inside was there strife. Not the strife of
outward jangling, or of sneering words, but the far more perilous
discord that lies hid behind a smiling mask. John’s mother was very
civil to Honor, but she could not forgive her for the _slight_ put upon
Mrs. Beacham of the Paddocks.

“Three cheers for the missus” indeed! It remained to be seen, the old
lady said to herself, who _was_ mistress at Pear-tree House. _Two_
couldn’t be, that was very clear; but if Mrs. John fancied that _she_
was going to “knock under,” why all that she could say was, that that
young woman would find herself pretty considerably mistaken.




CHAPTER XI.

BETWEEN TWO STOOLS.


“Do any of you happen to know when Arthur is going to be married?”

The question was Lady Millicent’s, and she asked it of her three younger
children one day towards the end of May, when Arthur was absent for a
few days in London, and the family dinner--not a very lively one--had
been just concluded. The servants--two of them in plush and powder, with
their chief in all the dignity of a white tie and glittering studs--had
left the room, and milady, looking as usual fat, fair, and comfortable
in her dark dress, a little _passée de mode_, ensconced her double chin
within the palm of her puffy white hand, and quietly awaited a response.

The girls from either side of the richly-furnished table glanced
furtively at each other, and Horace, who was feeling especially bright,
in consequence of having that day received the long-looked-for
notification that his examination would take place in the following
week, tapped his fingers lightly against the mahogany table, with an
assumed air of taking no interest in the question. He was seated in his
brother’s place, a half smile--a smile in which there was much latent
satire--playing over his intelligent face. Probably Lady Millicent’s
real or affected interest in her son’s proceedings rather amused than
disturbed him.

“Can’t anyone answer?” said Lady Millicent, who, like all great people,
had an objection to being kept waiting, and who was apt to be what is
vulgarly called “put out” by any apparent absence of obsequious respect.
“It doesn’t give much trouble to say either ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and Arthur is
so extremely mysterious that I am unfortunately obliged to address
myself to others for information.”

“I think it depends a good deal on his coming of age,” said Horace, who,
in spite of a certain vein of cynicism which occasionally gave
bitterness to his words, was sincerely attached to his brother, and ever
ready to give him a helping hand.

“I don’t suppose that old Dub will make any objection to its being a
case of no settlements on _our_ side--he’s such an uncommon liberal old
fellow; but, as Atty says,--and upon my word I think he’s right,--it is
awfully disgusting to owe everything to a woman.”

“Your poor father was of a different opinion,” said Lady Millicent
drily, and with her voice lowered to the properly pathetic tone in which
alone she allowed herself to speak of her dead husband. Horace turned
very red at this unexpected and, as he mentally called it, indelicate
remark. He was by nature an observant character, and young as he had
been at the time of his father’s fatal accident, he had, without
entertaining any desire to spy into peccant places, into the _rifts_,
great or small, of his parents’ inner life, already seen enough with
those keen eyes of his to convince him that only the outside surface of
things was smooth in his stately and prosperous home. The two lads had
during Cecil Vavasour’s lifetime been accustomed to hear much obsequious
praise and prosternating flattery of their mother. For years they had
grown up in the faith of her prudence, her large-mindedness, her
liberality, and her cleverness; and it was not till long after they were
fatherless that either Horace or Arthur became entirely convinced that
Lady Millicent had shone with reflected lustre only, and that the good
gifts for which the world had given her credit were not _hers_, but
those of the husband who had borne his faculties through life with such
a meek and unobtrusive grace. How far Lady Millicent was at that time
aware of the fact that the eyes of not only her children but the world
were opened to her shortcomings we need not now inquire. Proud and
arrogant though she was, “milady” would have been very far from pleased
could she have learned the truth, and known what a “falling-off was
there,” where but a few short years before all tongues, both male and
female, great and small, were wagging in her praise.

“Please, dear mother,” Horace said, with the angry spot deepening on his
brow, “to remember that my poor father’s name can never be brought
in--in--this way without giving pain to all of us. I always feel that
the opinions of one that is dead should be held even more sacred than
those of a person who is absent. The latter _may_ come back either to
uphold or to deny them, while--”

“My dear Horace,” interrupted Lady Millicent haughtily, “this will never
do; you will be thought--pardon me for saying so--a terrible bore in
society if you take to laying down the law in this prosy way. I little
thought when I asked you a simple question about your brother what I was
bringing upon myself.”

Horace laughed good-humouredly. Like most young men, he hated a _scene_
of any kind, and was very apt, for his sisters’ sake as well as his own,
to turn off Lady Millicent’s attacks with a joke.

“Thank you, ma’am, for the hint,” he said good-humouredly. “It _was_ a
great mistake on my part dogmatising in such a ponderous fashion. As to
your question, my dear mother, I really believe that Arthur is waiting
to learn something of your wishes on the subject. As we all know, he
will be twenty-one next month.”

“Yes, the parish register could have told you that,” put in Lady
Millicent sarcastically; “but I confess to seeing no connection whatever
between your brother’s age and his marriage.”

She fixed her eyes firmly on her son as she spoke. They were large,
handsome, defiant eyes, the only good feature in her face--good, that
is, if a feature can be called so which assists to give a hard and
unfeminine expression to its owner’s countenance. Again Horace
endeavoured to pass the matter lightly and playfully off.

“Well, it _is_ very absurd, I daresay,” he said; “but somehow or other,
though, the two _do_ seem to be connected. Perhaps, as I said before,
Arthur does not quite like marrying _in forma pauperis_. He may expect
that the tremendously important event of his coming of age would be
ushered in by a ‘ceremony’ which would require his presence. You can
understand, my dear mother,” Horace went on rather hurriedly, for he
felt that he was treading on dangerous ground,--“you can understand that
this is rather an--an awkward subject to talk over with you; and
besides, you will, I am sure, enter into his feelings about Mr. Duberly.
He is, as I said before, a capital old fellow; but, nevertheless, he
_may_ perhaps take it into his head to think that Arthur’s family
might--might come forward--”

“Come forward! Why, the man’s father was a cowkeeper, or a butterman, or
something of that kind! You don’t mean to say that _they_ are going to
make difficulties?”

“Not _difficulties_. O, no. Mr. Duberly would never run the risk of
‘dear Sophy’ losing what she had set her heart on. I believe that if she
wished to marry the chimney-sweep--”

“Which would be not at all an unsuitable alliance.”

They all laughed, following Lady Millicent’s lead, that lady evidently
thinking that she had made rather a happy hit. Kate, however, who was
growing nervous, telegraphed to her brother a hint that he should be
silent--a caution which the wilful Horace utterly disregarded.

“Poor old Atty,” Horace said, very impertinently his mother thought (in
fact, it was really surprising how greatly his approaching emancipation
was awakening the spirit of self-assertion in his juvenile
breast),--“poor old Atty, it is terrible to think that he should be
driven at his time of life by force of circumstances and adverse fate
to such awful _encanaillement_ as this!”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘adverse circumstances,’” said Lady
Millicent, looking very stern, and rising from her chair with a
considerable accession of dignity; “if young men will be extravagant and
get into debt, they must take the consequences;” and having so said,
Lady Millicent, after signing to her daughters to remain where they
were, swept grandly out of the room.

“O, Horace, how could you!” exclaimed Kate in an awe-struck whisper.

“How could I!” mimicked Horace. “How could I what? Why, you little
goose, when shall I make you understand that it is always better to take
(metaphorically speaking, of course) the bull by the horns? You ought to
know _that_ by this time; but, as you don’t, I can only repeat what I
have said fifty times before--that, what with your grimaces and Rhoda’s
tears, you are about the two silliest young women in Christendom.--Now,
Roe dear,” he went on, addressing his eldest sister in a tone of mock
displeasure which, together with the quaint name which he had bestowed
upon the quiet and slightly sentimental girl, set Kate off--no unusual
occurrence--into what Horace called a fit of the giggles,--“now, Roe
dear, what in the world are you crying about now?”

“I wasn’t crying, Horace,” said Rhoda. She was rather a pretty
pale-faced girl, whose tears--for her nerves were weak--came at very
slight provocation to her eyelids. She had wiped one furtively away
while her brother began to “chaff” her about this well-known propensity,
and then was quite ready to say tremulously: “I wasn’t crying, only
everything seems so uncomfortable; and it is so odd, not knowing when
Arthur is to be married. I believe he has told you! Now, has he, Horace?
Don’t be ill-natured;” and both the girls at once set to work to kiss
and coax him.

“Paws off!” cried Horace, laughing. “No, then, he hasn’t--upon my word,
he hasn’t. There! I hate not knowing the truth as much as you do; and I
only wish he was to be married next week.”

“And why?” Kate eagerly exclaimed; “you usen’t to like--”

“_Usen’t!_ What grammar! You’ll want Miss Bates back again if you can’t
speak your mother-tongue better than that.”

“Never mind my mother-tongue,” Kate began impatiently. “I want to be
told--”

“You want to be told a thousand things that you’ve no business to know.
You are both as curious as a couple of magpies; but you may chatter
till midnight without getting a word out of me. I’m off to the stable
for a smoke; so you needn’t bother me any more.”

In spite of the cheerful air and janty manner with which he endeavoured
to conceal his troubles, Horace Vavasour did not smoke on that especial
evening “the pipe of contentment;” nor could the corn-bin on which he
sat be in the smallest degree considered as typical of that well-known
“carpet of hope” on which the lethargic Turk is supposed to take his
ease.

“It is all my mother’s fault,” he murmured to himself, as he kicked his
dangling heels disconsolately against the solid oak. “If my mother would
but behave like other people! If she had kept up her house and
establishment in London, or even if she had given Arthur the means of
living like a gentleman, I never will believe that he _could_ have got
into these awful scrapes. What will happen if he does not marry soon,
God knows; and yet _for_ that poor girl’s sake one ought not to wish it.
I was sure how it would all be if once--” He drew a long whistling
breath, and threw down the end of his cigar, crushing its last spark out
with the heel of his boot. It was nine o’clock now, and the great
church-like stable-bell had already called the “faithful” to evening
prayers; and from force of habit, it is to be feared, rather than from
a higher and more Christian cause, Horace Vavasour hurried back to the
Castle. He did not seem to himself, however, to care much whether he
infringed Lady Millicent’s rules on that sweet May evening or not. He
was a man now, with a man’s profession, a man’s cares, and, to a certain
extent, a man’s responsibilities. For years--very long years they
appeared now as he looked back to them--he had nightly seen that long
array of serving men and women lining the old oak wall, and, as it were,
praying. He had heard his lady mother read many a blessing over their
heads; but somehow or other the ceremony had not seemed to bring a
blessing with it; and Horace was certainly rather consoled than
otherwise with the reflection that from that day forward, for many a
night to come, he would be allowed to spend his evening hours as he
pleased.




CHAPTER XII.

UPHILL WORK.


It was now the middle of June, and Honor Beacham was undergoing the
often painful process of “settling down” in her new home. The
observation is no new one, that the presence of a mother-in-law, be she
the parent of either wife or husband, in the _ménage_ of a newly-married
couple is seldom conducive to happiness. Honor, in common with all the
world, had heard the aphorism--heard it without believing it; for why,
she had often asked herself, should there of necessity be jealousies and
bickerings amongst those who were so near of kin, and whose interests
were identically the same? For her part, although a certain nervous
shyness, rare amongst her country people, made her a little “foolish,”
as John called it, when she thought of the possible difficulty of
pleasing his mother, yet, on the whole, she had entertained no doubt of
her success. The experience of her short life had not accustomed her to
failure. As yet, Honor had met with far more smiles than frowns, as she
stepped gaily along the flower-strewn path of life. Why, then, was she
to entertain misgivings of the future? Why suppose that her untiring
efforts to gain love and praise would be likely, in the case of John’s
obdurate mother, to be met with nothing better than “snubbings” and
mortification?

“Well, Honey, and how do you and the old lady get on together?” was
John’s first question, when, on the evening following their return, and
after an absence of many consecutive hours, he found himself alone with
his young wife.

Poor Honor! What would she not have given to be able to say with a full
and grateful heart that John’s mother had been “so good” and “kind” to
her? that henceforward she could love the dear “old lady” as though the
strongest ties of blood had knitted them together? She would have been
so glad, too, to give John pleasure; for well she knew how much, how
very much, at heart he had it that she and his mother should, to use his
characteristic phraseology, “pull well together.” Poor Honor! poor
little well-intentioned Irish maiden! She was sadly, altogether indeed,
deficient in moral courage, or in that early stage of her married life
she would have done that which might have changed the whole future of
her existence; namely, have frankly confessed to John her belief that
never, do what she could, and strive with all the powers of both head
and heart, could she hope to succeed in softening Mrs. Beacham’s
feelings towards her.

Against such a course, not only the tenderness, but the harmless,
natural vanity of the young wife revolted. It would be hard upon John to
be told that his expectations were so very far from being realised, and
it would be almost equally hard upon her were she forced to confess that
she had so signally failed in making a favourable impression. Honor, I
am ashamed to say, had shed more tears on that her first day’s
experience of an actual “home” than were either sensible or becoming.
Her poor little lip had quivered painfully when Mrs. Beacham, treating
her “like company,” had politely refused her assistance in such small
household cares as the dusting of dainty china and the “tying down” of
bottled gooseberries, both of which tasks were, as Honor thought, quite
within her powers skilfully to perform. But it was worse still when, at
the early dinner (without John, who was kept away by urgent business
connected with the “stock”), her mother-in-law, calling her “Mrs. John”
with stately formality, had kept her at arm’s-length in a forbidding
manner better imagined than described. In vain she strove by all the
simple arts she knew to work her way within the fence that girded the
good dame about as though with palisades of iron. She spoke of
John--_her_ John--with a large warm-hearted admiration and a meek
self-effacing gratitude that might have warmed a heart of stone. But all
in vain. Mrs. Beacham evidently considered that laudation of John was an
encroachment on her own rights, and, with a snort of dignified
displeasure, turned the subject to one more within the province and
capacity of the daughter-in-law whom she neither wished nor intended to
love. John Beacham little guessed how sore a heart it was that watched
so longingly that day for his return. If he thought about Honor at all
(and dearly as he loved his wife, why should he have thought of her when
his hands were so brimful of business, and his head, long though it was,
could scarcely carry all the weighty load that, for the nonce, it had to
bear?)--if he thought, then, about Honor at all, it was to fancy her
sitting side by side with “the old lady,” talking, as foolish women do,
with eager interest about the trifles that to them make up the sum of
life--the fashion of a bonnet, the wearing capabilities of a carpet, and
the merits or misdemeanours of a maidservant.

There was not a misgiving as to the truth in John’s honest breast,
while, helping himself to slice after slice of a cold sirloin, which he
pronounced as good a “bit” of meat as any in England, he dilated with
the loquacity and _verve_ of a man whose soul is in his subject on all
that had taken place during his absence: the promise held out by the
young stock, the health and well-being of the old, and the
trustworthiness and intelligence of Will Simmons, who had been on the
farm, man and boy, for forty years, were largely dwelt on; and for once,
as it appeared by John Beacham’s showing, things had gone on quite as
well during the master’s absence as they would have done had they been
subject to his daily supervision. Verily “eye-service” was unknown in
the breeding-establishment of Updown Paddocks!

And all this time, what was Honor thinking of as she sat by her
husband’s side, her work lying idle on her lap, and her eyes fixed
vacantly on the goodly joint so rapidly diminishing under the effects of
John’s healthy appetite? He had not waited for the answer to his
question regarding the way in which she and “the old lady” had “got on”
together. The query had, in fact, been almost made unconsciously, no
fear of a possibly unfavourable reply having for a moment crossed his
mind; but to Honor, who had yearned for his return from a vague idea
that there would be comfort and encouragement from his very
presence--to Honor, whose heart was sore and her mind engrossed by the
failures and mortifications with which that long wearisome day had been
fraught--the sight of that excellent John satisfying, with such evident
_gusto_, his carnivorous appetite, and wholly engrossed by interests
extraneous to herself, was anything but exhilarating. Nor were matters
mended when, an hour later, the tired, contented man (the empty glass,
where hot toddy _had been_, standing empty at his elbow) stretched
himself comfortably in his big leathern chair, and slept the sleep of
the just.

Will any of my readers, when I inform them that this was the climax of
poor little Honor’s woe, and that at the sight of John’s slumbering form
tears welled from her eyelids, be disposed utterly to despise my
heroine, and condemn her as one unworthy the interest and sympathy of
sensible people? If there be any such--and I am quite prepared to
believe in their existence--all I can say is, that their knowledge of
female nature is as limited as their charity for human weakness is small
and inefficient. That this young wife was very far from either feeling
or conducting herself as she should have done, I am quite willing to
admit. The deep slumber of the unconscious John, to say nothing of the
heavy breathing (I will not shock my refined readers by using a more
definite term) that arose at stated intervals from his place of repose,
ought to have sounded sweetly in his helpmate’s ears as a proof of good
digestion and a mind at ease. Patiently--contentedly even--should she
have bided the time of his awaking; while, instead, what did that
impulsive Honor do? Why, with those foolish tears still glistening on
her long lashes, she whispered a “good-night” to her mother-in-law and
crept off to bed, nothing heeding the warning finger and the
“hush--sh--sh” of the disagreeable old lady; acts which, in Honor’s
condition of mind--for the poor girl was not, I grieve to say,
perfect--were in themselves no trifling aggravation.




CHAPTER XIII.

A BREEZE ABOUT A BONNET.


It was on a Sunday morning, about a fortnight after the return of the
travellers, that Honor had the first serious warning of coming
“difficulty” with her mother-in-law. I have often heard it remarked, and
I fear with some degree of truth, that the Seventh is very apt to be the
one, of all days in the year, when domestic differences do most
frequently arise. Why this should be is not, I think, very difficult of
comprehension. To such women as Mrs. Beacham--to the habitually
“busy”--the enforced idleness of Sunday hangs terribly heavy on the
folded hands. When an active-minded and energetic female has nothing to
do, there is a terrible temptation to be cantankerous. With John’s
restless, vigorous-bodied parent the Sabbath was anything but a
favourite time. She paid all outward respect to the hours between
sunrise and bedtime on the “Lord’s day.” Her best gown was donned, and
her roast beef eaten; the knitting-needles were put away, and Cowper’s
Sermons or Law’s _Serious Call_ brought forward in their stead. Mrs.
Beacham might even go so far as to _call_ the “Sabbath a delight, the
holy of the Lord, honourable;” but she was, nevertheless, very thankful
(under the rose) when the irksome hours drew to a close; and if there
did happen to be a day when, to use Letty’s favourite expression,
“missus got out the wrong side of her bed,” that day was pretty certain
to be the Seventh.

It would seem that John was not altogether unaware of this trifling
peculiarity, for during breakfast-time he was seen to _wink_ more than
once with an air of comic warning to Honor, as much as to say, “Take no
notice; this is but a passing shower, the looming of a summer cloud; the
slightest possible crumpling of the tender roses with which our bed is
strewn.” He was quite in the dark--Honor understood that well--as to the
real state of things between her and his mother. He had yet to discover
that, during his long daily absences, although no overt act, no _words_
even of which she could actually complain, had made her life
uncomfortable, still there was an undercurrent of “nagging,” a perpetual
though not always a very perceptible “talking at,” on the old lady’s
part, which was far harder to endure patiently than the open harshness
of language which Honor felt certain that John’s mother was often
longing to attack her with.

The first Sunday at the Paddocks having been a hopelessly rainy day,
there had been no walking along the lanes to attend Divine Service: the
Seventh day had, however, now come round again, and the shy
consciousness of early wifehood having a little worn off, Honor, as was
only natural, had allowed her thoughts to wander to a no less important
subject than the dress in which, at Switcham Church, she was to make her
first appearance as a wife. The result of these meditations, and
also--if the truth must be told--of a little stitching and altering, was
as pretty a specimen of Sabbath-day adornment as ever entered the walls
of a village church. And yet there was nothing (bright as a spring
butterfly though she looked) the least over-dressed, or unbecoming her
situation in life, in Honor Beacham’s attire. There were no
incongruities, no single article of dress outshone or put shame upon the
other, there had been no “trimming of robe of frieze with copper-lace;”
but all was neat, effective, and, so far as Honor and the Leigh
dressmaker together could achieve the desired object, according to the
make and fashion of the day.

“Now then, Honey, let’s have a good look at you,” exclaimed John, as,
five minutes before the moment appointed for setting forth, his wife,
with a blush of gratified vanity on her cheek (for the glass had told
her she was worth the looking at), tripped confidently up to him for
approval. Before he could speak, however, Mrs. Beacham’s harsh voice
broke the charm, and John’s complimentary words were frozen on his lips.

“My good gracious me!” she cried; “why you’re never surely going to
church in that thing!” and she pointed with a thick finger, clothed in
the stoutest of useful bottle-green gloves, at Honor’s airy bonnet; a
small senseless thing enough, but very becoming all the same, with its
trimming of blue forget-me-nots, showing off to perfection the soft
beauty of the brown braided hair, and matching the azure eyes, John
thought, so prettily. “To church of all places!” continued the old lady,
whose headgear, being of very ancient fashion and materials, had struck
Honor as far more remarkable than her own. “Why, you’ll have everyone
looking at you!”

“And like enough too,” said John with a laugh, and hoping by this
_judicious_ manœuvre to divert the rising storm, “let her put on what
she may. But I say, mother, what’s wrong with Honor’s bonnet? I don’t
pretend to know much about women’s dress, about their crinoline and
hairbags, for instance. You don’t wear one of them I’m glad to see,
Honey,” he went on, twisting a shining curl that strayed upon her white
throat round his big finger as he spoke. “I’m all for nature, I am; but
as for the child’s bonnet, mother--”

“Now, John,” put in Mrs. Beacham irritably, “don’t you be foolish. I
_must_ know better than you can do what’s proper for a young woman to
wear; and I say that such a thing as _that_ isn’t fit to be seen within
a church door.”

Honor could not help smiling--for she did not foresee to what extent her
stepmother’s temper would carry her--at the old woman’s abuse of her
unoffending costume. She felt certain too of John’s support, and
therefore replied cheerfully:

“I am very sorry; I thought it such a pretty bonnet. However, I daresay
nobody will look at it; and my best hat got so spoilt at Ryde--”

“Spoilt indeed! Ryde seems to have played the mischief with all your
smart new clothes. And as if you could venture into church in one of
those flighty pork-pies, that I hate the very sight of!”

“Well then,” interposed John, “as that matter’s settled, suppose we cut
along. Got your Prayer-book, eh, Honey? That’s all right;” and he was
half out of the door, when, instead of following on his footsteps, Mrs.
Beacham plumped her ample figure down on her own especial arm-chair, and
planted her two hands defiantly on her knees.

“You may go to church, John, if _you_ like; but as for me, if you’ve no
objection, I prefer to remain at home.”

“Nonsense, mother! Come! The idea of going on so about a bonnet! I’m
sure Honor doesn’t care, do you, Pet? She doesn’t mind what she wears,
mother, not she! She’s pretty enough not to, any way,” he added in a
lower tone; not so low, however, but that his mother heard the words,
and grew thereupon more than ever determined to conquer and humble the
object of John’s foolish admiration and absurdly weak and blamable
indulgence.

“If she doesn’t care then, let her change it,” she said stolidly,--“let
her change it. She’s got another in her box--one that a decent woman
needn’t be ashamed to be seen in, and--”

“O, John, it’s _such_ an old-fashioned one!” Honor broke in. “I’ve had
it these two years, and it’s only fit for rainy days. I’d rather not go,
indeed I would;” and the tears, I am sorry to say, were already very
near her bright blue eyes.

John scratched his head in very positive perplexity. To yield to his
mother had, from long habit, become almost second nature to the
good-tempered man; but then, nature--and nature too with a very powerful
voice--pleaded within him strongly for Honor. He could not bear to see
her vexed; and she would be vexed, that he knew right well, if they
both--his mother and himself--went off to church and left her all alone.
But then, if she so disliked the idea of wearing the two-year-old
bonnet, and if--which he knew well enough would be the case--his mother
would not yield, why what was to be done? It was the beginning of
domestic troubles--a foreshadowing of the cloud that was to darken all
John’s future life--the first faint warnings of the fell disease that,
like the cankerworm, eats into the vital parts, and poisons the whole
sap of life, and this truth (though John was far enough from shaping to
himself any, even the most indistinct, of the evils that were
threatening his peace) probably lay at the root of the strange
discouragement which, while he turned his eyes alternately from his wife
to his mother, gave a look of bewilderment to his usually placid face.

It was that look which decided Honor, showing her the way her duty lay,
and awakening her pity for the man halting so helplessly between two
opinions.

“After all,” she said to herself, calling up as much philosophy to her
aid as a weak vessel of her sex and age could hope to summon,--“after
all, what does it signify? It _is_ absurd to make so much fuss about a
bonnet;” and then aloud, “I don’t care--indeed I don’t, John; and rather
than vex you, I’ll change it in half a moment;” and she ran upstairs
with an alacrity which confirmed John in the impression that she was an
angel.

And so at the moment--or at least very like one--Honor felt that she had
earned the right to be considered; for she was--absurd as it may seem to
those among my readers who have either outlived, or have never been
subject to, the weakness of personal vanity--about to make what was to
her a great, ay even a heroic, sacrifice. She had so looked forward to
appearing her very best that day. Religion, I grieve to confess, had
little enough to do (when, alas I has it ever much?) with the fitting on
of the best gown, and the extra smoothing of the shining hair. In nine
cases out of ten, the remembering of the Sabbath-day does not mean the
keeping of it holy. Jill, it is to be feared, goes to church to show
herself; while Jack, in his best coat and Sunday hat, goes through the
same ceremony that he may join his sweetheart. Can we wonder that too
often these respective parties come to grief, and, like the Jack and
Jill in the story-book, wounds and bruises (metaphorically speaking) are
the well-deserved consequences of their levity and _supercherie_?

Seeing then that the female mind is, both from nature and habit, loth to
believe in the “glaring impotence” of “dress,” we may excuse this poor
Honor for her petulance, and for the little angry jerk with which she
threw open the old mahogany wardrobe, and drew from it the contemned and
faded specimen of bygone finery. With a flushed face, and hands that
trembled a little with the passing irritation of the moment, she tied
the tumbled strings under her dainty chin, and then, without stopping to
look at her “shabby” self in the glass, she hastened down the stairs.

John and his mother had already left the house when Honor, feeling very
proud of her holocaust, and not a little eager to judge of its effect
upon those she had endeavoured to please, rushed into the hall. She knew
it was late, and moreover Mrs. Beacham was, she felt, precisely the kind
of old woman who would not enter a Church after the service had begun
for the world; but in spite of these and other excuses that might be
made for the disappearance of her companions, Honor did feel it a little
hard that they had not waited for her--a trifle provoking that John
should have cared so little whether she looked well or ill in that “guy
of a thing” that she had put upon her head. She betrayed no outward
signs of the foolish, perhaps too it may be called _puerile_, inward
struggle--the battle against what I fear might almost be called a “bit
of temper” that was rife within her. Overtaking John and his mother
walking quietly arm-in-arm, “as if nothing had happened,” it was only
natural, I think, that this silly girl should have entertained a vague
impression that she, the bride of four weeks old, had been “thrown
over”--and that, too, after she had shown herself so willing to
“oblige”--for the sake of the “cross,” “fussy” old woman, behind whose
broad uncompromising back Honor (and it must be confessed that at the
moment she did not greatly love the sight) was trudging across the
meadows, with her fair face--that bonnet was so very old-fashioned and
ugly!--slightly overshadowed by a passing cloud.

It _was_ only a trifle, you will say, that produced this inauspicious
result; but need I repeat that trifles make up the sum of human life?
Were we all to look back upon some of the most important incidents of
our lives, I think--could we all be strictly honest with ourselves--we
should be willing to allow that what seemed a mere “nothing” at the time
was not without its influence, not only on our conduct, but on that
which goes by the name (for want of a better) of our destinies. Honor
would have been as incredulous as her neighbours had it been suggested
to her that in her present petulance there lay the germ of future peril,
and that the apparently insignificant family feud with which that
peaceful-seeming Sabbath had been marked was _le commencement de la fin_
of her life’s history; and yet that so it was the events hereafter to be
disclosed will greatly tend to prove.

Many and curious were the eyes turned towards “Farmer Beacham’s” pew
that holiday in early June, when the sun shone out and nature’s garb was
fresh, and when it would almost seem that, out of compliment to the
bride, each daughter of Eve there present had bedecked herself in her
Sunday’s best. With her head bent down and half hidden by the high oaken
walls of the old-fashioned pew, Honor endeavoured, and not wholly
without success, to remember that the “place in which she stood was holy
ground.” She never once raised her blue eyes from the bran-new
red-morocco Prayer-book--gilt-edged, and which was one of John’s
earliest offerings to his betrothed--which she held in her hand. A shy
consciousness that she was the observed of all observers in that crowded
village church, together with the mortifying reflection which, _malgré
elle_, would intrude itself, that she was not “fit to be seen,” brought
pretty waves of colour to the lowered girlish face.

From his place in the gallery, the most conspicuous one in the big,
well-cushioned, luxurious family pew, there was one who throughout the
service continued furtively to gaze upon the features which to his eyes
were so surpassing fair. Though, for his age, he had seen a good deal of
the world, Arthur Vavasour was still in every way too young to set the
opinion of that world at absolute defiance; so he chose the opportunity
when he and the rest of the congregation were on their knees, repeating
with wearisome monotony that they were all “miserable sinners,” to gaze
his fill at the farmer’s lovely bride. In the house of God, under the
shelter of his folded arms, in the humble posture of a penitent, he was
already breaking in his heart the one of the commandments on which most
strenuously depends “our neighbour’s” peace, his honour and well-being!

Truly it was well for Cecil Vavasour that his sleep was sound in the
churchyard vault that day, and that to him it was not given to look
within the erring heart of his eldest born! That son, who in his
beautiful childhood had been so very near his father’s heart, stood
terribly in need that Sabbath-day, proud and handsome and prosperous
though he seemed, of the “effectual fervent prayer” which in the sight
of Heaven “availeth much.”




CHAPTER XIV.

MR. DUBERLY TAKES THE ALARM.


Before the summer days had begun to shorten, and by the time that Arthur
Vavasour’s evident admiration for young Mrs. Beacham had begun to make
his more cool and sensible younger brother seriously uneasy, the
period--namely, the end of August--was fixed for the marriage of the
heir with Miss Sophia Duberly, the only child of one of the richest
_nobodies_ in the county. A fortnight previous to the epoch named,
Arthur would, unless, as Horace facetiously remarked, anything happened
to the contrary, attain the mature age of twenty-one. As regarded the
latter event, Lady Millicent had continued to maintain a dogged and
portentous silence. She was well aware that her children, the girls
especially, had hoped and expected that Arthur’s “coming of age” would
not pass over entirely without the “praise and honour due” to a rich
man’s son so situated; and though the traditional ox need not be
exactly roasted whole, nor gigantic bonfires lighted on the occasion,
yet Lady Millicent was as well aware as if the county newspapers had not
persistently proclaimed the fact that England expected her on this
occasion to do her duty.

“I do really believe she would hinder Atty coming of age at all if she
could,” Kate said one day, when Horace had “run down” for an hour to
brighten up his sisters, and see how things in general were going on.
“Mamma does so hate any of us being jolly.”

“And you call ‘coming of age’ ‘being jolly,’ eh, goosie? Learn then, O
foolish child, that the event you speak of means ‘looking up,’ paying
one’s own bills, being responsible for one’s own actions--being, in
short, out of _nonage_, without the accruing of a grain of brains to
oneself thereby.”

“But I suppose that something will be done,” persisted Kate, who, in
spite of her brother’s repeated assurances that a miracle would probably
not be wrought in her behalf, still nursed the hope that “milady” would
at last be brought to reason. “I cannot believe that the 14th of August
will pass like every other dull stupid day. I thought there was always a
dinner, and a ball, and speeches.”

“And buttering up, and slithering down,” broke out Horace savagely;
“toadying, flattering, and lies! Of all the occasions in life when that
kind of thing is carried on, there’s nothing like the coming of age of
an heir-apparent!”

“I quite agree with you, my dear Horace,” said Lady Millicent, sailing
in silently from behind a treacherous _portière_, and raising a painful
doubt in her children’s mind as to the extent of her knowledge thus
surreptitiously acquired of their opinions. “A great waste of words
always, to say nothing of the whole proceeding being always in the worst
possible taste.”

“Of course! The idea of crying _Vive le roi!_ before the poor old king
is dead! Simply monstrous, I call it. Arthur too quite agrees with me;
and after all, what business has the county to trouble itself about the
matter one way or the other?”

“I hear,” said Lady Millicent, who did not feel quite sure that her son
was not speaking in the ironical vein to which she had so especial an
objection,--“I hear that the Guernseys are going to make themselves more
than usually ridiculous this year at Fairleigh. Lady G. intends to do
the popular, they say, for a whole fortnight. Open house is to be
kept--so intensely absurd! And people of all kinds to be asked! In
short, a regular _omnium gatherum_!”

“O no, mamma, not quite that,” Rhoda said timidly, but terribly eager
withal to do away with an impression which might tend to exclude _her_
from a participation in the gaieties of Fairleigh. “Not quite; and O,
mamma,” gathering a kind of desperate courage from the emergency of the
case, “you promised that if Lady Guernsey gave a ball this year, I
_should_ go to it. I know just how it is; Charlotte Mellon told me all
about the arrangements. _All_ kinds of people are to be asked to the
archery meeting and the fireworks--all the out-of-doors amusements, that
is; but at the ball there will only be the county families, and--”

“How delightfully dull and select!” said Horace. “And how highly
satisfactory, Rhoda, to think that you will make your _début_ under such
very favourable auspices!”

“Anything is better than a mixed society,” said Lady Millicent loftily.
“In these days one cannot be too careful whom one associates with. I
foresee no end of annoyances with the Duberly connections. The women
belonging to that class of persons are often positively dreadful. Really
Arthur is much worse than thoughtless! Only this afternoon he has been
the cause of my being excessively worried and disturbed! Here is a
letter which I have just received from Mr. Duberly. I thought it most
extraordinary when I saw the post-mark, Bigglesworth, that _I_ should
receive a letter from any of the family; but I was still more astonished
when I glanced over the contents. _Read_ it! I really couldn’t get
through it all, but I saw it was about your brother being so much at
Updown Paddocks. _His_ father--fancy the man talking to me about his
relations!--considers it very wrong, he writes, and dangerous to be on
the turf; and Arthur _must_, he concludes, have to do with race-horses,
or he would never be so much with John Beacham at the Paddocks. You had
better see your brother about it, Horace, as soon as possible. I really
can have nothing to do personally with these people. They are
respectable, of course, or your poor father would not have countenanced
them; but they are terribly _mezzo cetto_, and when that is the case,
anything approaching to familiarity had better be avoided.”

Amongst Lady Millicent’s “peculiarities” (and they were not a few) that
of extreme bodily restlessness was one of the most remarkable. She was
one of the very busiest of idlers, never for fifteen consecutive
minutes, excepting at meal or prayertime, in the same place. These
“fidgety ways” were troublesome, as well as frequently inconvenient, to
those about her. To know where _others_ of a household _are_, the more
especially when those “others” chance to be of the nature of Lady
Millicent Vavasour, is often of advantage to the subordinates of a
family. Severity, Caprice, an absence on the said subordinates’ part of
knowing how anything “will be taken” by the “head of the family,” are
each and all sufficient to account for the secretiveness, guilty in
appearance, that kindles in both children and servants the very natural
desire that the whereabouts of the domestic autocrat should not always
be a matter of conjecture. But it was to no inward fever, no derangement
of the sensitive nerves, that the nomadic condition of the lady of
Gillingham could be attributed, for her health was perfect, and her
constitution sound. The erratic habit had been formed in childhood, and
had increased, instead of diminishing, with advancing years.

       *       *       *       *       *

“I say, Miss Curiosity, that won’t do. You mustn’t read other people’s
letters.”

Lady Millicent had glided with her accustomed stately step from the
room; and Horace, in whose hand was Mr. Duberly’s open letter, glanced
up at his sister Kate reading over his shoulder the epistle which her
lady mother was either too autocratic or too indolent to answer. Kate’s
colour, between shame and amusement, mounted visibly. Although taught by
experience that his “bark was worse than his bite,” she was still a
little afraid of her brother Horace.

“I thought everybody was to read it,” she said deprecatingly. “Don’t be
ill-natured, Horace; I do so want to know about Atty.”

“I daresay you do; and if you did, why everybody else would pretty soon
be in the secret, and with a vengeance too! No, no, Miss Katie; a young
lady who chatters to her maid is neither old enough nor wise enough to
be told family secrets to--so off with you! If you want anything to do
go to the terrace, and keep a good look-out for Arthur; tell him there’s
a row going on, and that he’d better look sharp, and take the bull by
the horns.”

“And now for old Dub’s letter,” muttered Horace, after convincing
himself by ocular demonstration that both his sisters were sauntering
along the broad gravel-walk, and, as he doubted not, exercising their
united powers of guessing on the subject of Arthur’s misdemeanours. “Old
Dub’s too straightforward to say anything that my lady can understand;”
and with this dutiful commentary on his parent’s powers of
comprehension, Horace Vavasour betook himself to his task.

     “MY DEAR MADAM,”--so this straightforward letter began--“I greatly
     regret the necessity of calling your attention to the subject of
     your eldest son; but as that subject is at present connected with
     the happiness of my only daughter, there is no other course left me
     to pursue. You are aware that Sophy is my only child, and your own
     feelings as a mother will lead you to understand that her welfare
     must be infinitely precious to me. My reason for troubling you
     to-day is very simple, and the question I desire to have answered
     is, I think, natural enough, being neither more nor less than a
     demand, on my part, whether the report that your son Arthur has a
     horse in training for the turf is true or false. You will perhaps
     be inclined to ask why I have thought it necessary to beat about
     the bush; why, in short, I did not put this question to your son
     instead of to you. To this very natural remark all I could say is
     that I _did_, without delay, mention the reports which had reached
     my ears to Arthur, and that from him I could gain no satisfactory
     reply. He neither positively denied or actually confirmed the
     scandal; for so great is my horror of gambling in any shape that I
     can designate taking a single step on what is called the ‘turf’ by
     no milder name; and the consequence of our conversation was simply
     this,--namely, that, being very far from satisfied either by your
     son’s words or manner, I take the liberty of requesting your
     maternal aid in discovering the truth. Of your son’s constant, I
     was about to say daily, visits at the Paddocks there is, I fear, no
     doubt, and you can hardly wonder that, with my child’s future
     comfort at stake, I feel it my bounden duty to investigate
     thoroughly, and without loss of time, the cause and motive for a
     proceeding so remarkable. I have no desire that this inquiry, on my
     part, should be kept secret either from Arthur or from the world at
     large, and have the honour to remain, dear madam,

                                                     “Yours faithfully,
                                             “ANDREW DUBERLY.”

“Well, old fellow, you are in for it now! I wouldn’t be in your place
for something,” said Horace when, half an hour after he had finished
reading “old Dub’s” letter, and long before the annoyance caused by its
perusal had in any degree subsided, Arthur lounged, after his usual
indolent fashion, through the open window into the library.

“Well, what _is_ the row? The girls told me there was something wrong.
Upon my soul, one might as well pitch one’s tent in Mexico, or in the
Argentine Republic, for any chance of peace one has in this confounded
place.”

“Better a great deal,” said Horace seriously,--“better, a thousand
times, go to the uttermost ends of the earth than sow such a storm as,
if I’m not mistaken, you will reap the whirlwind of by and by.”

“Well, but what _is_ in the wind?” asked Arthur, smiling at the faint
idea that he had made a joke.

“_What!_ Just read _that_, and you’ll soon see what a kick-up there’s
likely to be.”

“Prying old idiot!” exclaimed Arthur, tossing the letter of his future
father on the table in disgust. “Why the ---- can’t he mind his own
business, and be hanged to him!”

“Perhaps he thinks that his daughter _is_ his business; but however that
may be, the deed is done, the letter written, and the question now is
how you can satisfy old Dab’s mind that all is right. I conclude that it
_is_ all right, though I must say, Atty, it does, between you and me,
look fishy, your going so very often over to John Beacham’s house.”

“But I don’t go there so very often,” broke in Arthur eagerly; “it’s all
a pack of cursed lies. How could I go to the Paddocks every day, as the
old fool says I do, when I am twice a week, at least, at Fairleigh?”

“Really! How pleasant for Sophy!” said Horace drily. “The worst of all
this, though, is, that old Dub isn’t quite in his dotage yet, and may
be sufficiently up in local geography to be aware that, by judicious
management, it is possible to reach Fairleigh _viâ_ Updown Paddocks.
Seriously now, Atty, can you in your sober senses think that the way you
are going on is either right or prudent? Here you are, within a few
weeks of marrying the girl you are engaged to--a nice girl, too, and you
thought so yourself before you got spooney (nay, hear me out, for it
_is_ true, and you know it is) on John Beacham’s wife,--here you are, I
say, making her (I mean Sophy Duberly) miserable; and what is far
worse--for girls soon get over that kind of thing--you are sowing the
seeds of lasting wretchedness in another man’s house. You are--”

“I--I am doing nothing,” broke in Arthur pettishly; adding, with
brotherly familiarity, “What a fool you are!”

“Thanks for the compliment; but I must be a still greater fool than I am
not to foresee a _little_ of the mischief that is brewing there.” And he
pointed over his shoulder in the direction of John Beacham’s home. “Why,
even a child could see it,--even Katie, who for a girl is wonderfully
unknowing in delicate matters of this kind and description--”

“But,” said Arthur, very seriously this time, and speaking in language
which would have carried conviction to his brother’s mind, even had the
latter (which was not the case) entertained the idea that there was
anything “really wrong” in Arthur’s intimacy with John Beacham’s
family,--“but, Horace, I declare to you solemnly, by all I hold most
sacred--I won’t say by my love for my mother, for I don’t love her, and
it would be extremely odd if I did--but I swear to you by my father’s
memory that there is no foundation, none whatever, for any of the
spiteful things that people dare to say of John Beacham’s wife. She’s
not happy, poor little thing, certainly, but--”

“Not happy? Why, what’s the matter with her? She’s got the best husband
in the country, and the nicest house to live in--I declare I don’t know
a more comfortable place than Pear-tree House--and the prettiest horse
to ride, and--”

“Yes, of course; all that is very nice; but then there’s the old woman.”

“John’s mother? So she is the crumpled rose-leaf, eh?”

“Well, yes, in some degree; but then John himself is partly to blame.
You see, he does not understand Honor.”

“That may be more his misfortune than his fault, poor fellow! But, Atty,
I _am_ sorry to hear that you have come to _confidences_. I had an idea
before all this that Honor was a quiet, good, honourable girl; and I
know that the parson’s wife had the best possible opinion of her, when
she was a girl, and used to teach a class at milady’s school; but what
you say now makes me think her very far from either sensible or
grateful--to say nothing of rectitude. When I know what a real good
fellow John Beacham is, it seems such a shame of his wife to be
complaining of him.”

Arthur laughed. He felt, in his superior wisdom, that his brother knew
wonderfully little of the qualities required by a woman in the man who
aspires to her love.

“Nonsense!” he said; “she doesn’t complain. One sees those things for
oneself, without hearing about them. I never saw a gentler or a more
forbearing creature than that dear little Irish girl, who is wretchedly
out of place at Updown Paddocks. She is utterly wasted upon John, who,
as you say, is the best fellow in the world, only so boorish compared to
her, and so thoroughly unintellectual! Thinks of nothing from morning
till night, and probably dreams of nothing _then_, but of his farm and
breeding-stud. I declare that it seems the work of some horrible fate,
some malicious demon, to have bound such a glorious woman as that to the
side of a man so totally unsuited to her--so completely incapable of
appreciating the beauty, and the delicacy, and the refinement--”

Horace stopped him with a laugh.

“The Lady Clara Vere de Vere and the clown, eh, over again? Well, I
suppose it may be because I happen to be one of the rougher-looking sort
myself--made of coarser clay, you know--that I cannot help having a sort
of fellow-feeling for poor John. I wonder now, if I were ever to
marry--and such an event is just possible, though I confess that it does
not seem likely, as things stand at present,--I wonder, I was going to
say, whether in that case any of you good-looking, languid swells--you
fastidiously refined fellows--would be found willing to believe me
capable of appreciating the charms of my own wife. Of course, it is not
in the power of we ordinary mortals to make ourselves as agreeable as
men who are blessed with straight noses, six feet of manhood, and wavy
hair; but you might give us credit for _some_ sense of the beautiful;
you really might allow that we can see and feel and love the woman whom
you admire, even though nature may have cruelly denied us the gift of
charming in our turn.”

Arthur looked at his brother in surprise. It was very seldom that
Horace, who was not of an impulsive nature, broke into so discursive a
speech. He had a way--at least, so it had hitherto appeared--of taking
life and the things of life so easily. Judging from the airy
_insouciance_ of his words and manner, his own lack of personal
attraction had never weighed upon his spirits; the giving of advice,
too, whether by implication or otherwise, to his big, experienced elder
brother, was so out of Horace’s line, that Arthur’s surprise at this
unexpected outbreak is scarcely to be wondered at. Any relative
response, however, whether in the shape of protest against, or of
acquiescence in, the general truth of his brother’s remark, appeared to
him to be simply impossible, and he therefore betook himself to the open
field of general observation.

“What a bore it is,” he said with a yawn that was not wholly the result
of weariness, “that every simple thing one does gets commented on and
gossiped about!”

“That comes of being an elder son. One of the penalties of greatness is
the bore, as you call it, of being the observed of all observers. It
would be long enough before the world paid me such a compliment.
Seriously, though,” he continued, glad, perhaps, of the opportunity thus
afforded of passing off as a jest the sarcasms which had in a moment of
irritation escaped his lips,--“seriously, though, Arthur, this strikes
me as being that unpleasant thing called a ‘crisis.’ If I know anything
of old Dub, he won’t let this matter rest till it’s thoroughly cleared
up. He wouldn’t have written to Lady M. if he hadn’t been in earnest;
and now the question is, how the deuce you are going to tackle the old
fellow.”

“God knows; I’m quite sure that _I_ don’t!” said Arthur helplessly, for
he foresaw endless difficulties--greater difficulties far than Horace
could form any idea of--in the process of “tackling” to which his
brother alluded. “It’s such a nuisance--such a horrible nuisance--to be
questioned in this sort of way!”

“Is it? I don’t think I should mind it; that is to say if I was all
right--all on the square, you know. The fact is, Atty,--and I can see it
as plain as possible, though of course it isn’t pleasant to you to
believe it,--that old Duberly has got _two_ ideas about this business in
his head; and these two ideas are, in my opinion, two too many. In the
first place he is suspicious, as old fellows of that kind are so apt to
be, about the horse-breeding part of the affair. Now, if you could tell
him on your honour that you have no horse in training--that you have not
the slightest intention, either directly or indirectly, of going on the
turf--why there would be nothing more to be said on that score.”

Arthur rose from his chair and walked about the room impatiently.

“But suppose I _can’t_ swear to that?” he said, speaking in the annoyed
tone of a man who had forced himself to utter a disagreeable truth. “The
fact is,” he went on confidentially, “I have bought--on tick of
course--one of John Beacham’s yearlings--the best he has bred since he
began the concern--by Oddfellow out of Gay Lady. You never saw such
bone! John’s quite certain--and you know how safe he is--that my
colt--Rough Diamond his name is--will be a Derby horse. I paid a long
price for him--I’m half afraid to say how much--but when one is so
positively certain to make such a pot of money as I shall, why what
_does_ it signify?”

The look--half comic and half pityingly sardonic--that settled for a
moment on the plain, but singularly expressive, face of Horace Vavasour
would have been a study for a picture.

“So!” he drawled out, “the old fellow is not so far wrong after all! No
wonder you were taken aback when he asked those leading questions!”

“Taken aback! I should think I just was! Why I should like to know what
_you_ would have been!”

“Quite as much disgusted, I suspect, if not more than you were
yourself; but somehow or other, Atty--though I don’t set up for being a
bit better than other people--these are not, I fancy, exactly the kind
of hobbles that I should have been likely to get into.”

“What do you mean?” asked Arthur a little sulkily. “It strikes me that I
haven’t done anything at all out of the common way.”

“Not the least in the world,” rejoined Horace drily; “but that does not
disprove what I said. I don’t want to boast. The fact, if it were
proved, is nothing to be proud of; but I feel sure that I should not
have made love to one woman while I was engaged to another; and as
certain am I of this--that I should not have gone into partnership with
an honest man like John, in order that--”

“Horace!” cried Arthur in a towering passion, and taking his stand in
front of the chair in which his brother leant back, calm and impassible,
“you have no right--none whatever--especially after what I said just
now, to believe me capable--”

“It is partly from the very words you said just now that I draw my
conclusions,” interrupted Horace. “What old Duberly drew _his_ from can
only of course be guessed at.”

“_Guessed_ at! What utter rot! What confounded humbug!”

“Well, have it your own way. Give up that poor girl Sophy--for it _is_
giving her up if you don’t satisfy her father--be talked of all over the
county as--”

“I don’t care a d--n about that,” growled Arthur.

“So many fellows have said before they were tried. Throw away all chance
of that blessed home at Fairleigh, that the poor girls have built upon
so much; and all because you haven’t the courage, or rather because you
are too self-indulgent, to give up a little momentary amusement,--or
rather, if you like it better, though I confess to considering it a
distinction without a difference, because you happen to be a little--as
I said before--spooney on John Beacham’s wife.”

Arthur made a gesture indicative of disgust.

“Hear me out, please,” Horace went on to say. “What I want you to do is,
to think seriously of all these necessary consequences, and to ask
yourself whether _le jeu vaut la chandelle_. I, for my part--but then I
have the good fortune neither to be, nor to fancy myself, in love--have
an idea that it does not. In the first place, remember--not that we are
any of us in much danger of the fact escaping our memory--what a
wretched home this is. Think what a contrast to the dulness, the
restraint, the everyday--well, I won’t go on; we both know only too
well how wretched one person can contrive to make a house--but just
think of the contrast to all this that Fairleigh is! Old Duberly, with
his cheerful, hearty ways--I declare Lady M.’s are enough to give one a
sickener of refinement; everyone allowed to please himself; no one lying
in wait for occasions on which to differ; annoying trifles, or trifles
that might have been annoying, delightfully slided over; and no
‘head-of-the-house’ tyranny, causing one to long at every hour of the
day for the desperate remedy of a bloodless revolution--”

“That is all very true, but--”

“But what? I suppose you mean to remind me that you are not doomed to
bear with the wretchedness of Gillingham for ever. Of course you are
not; but in the mean time there are the involvements,--O Atty, I hate to
talk of, but you know that _there they are_. And then there is poor
Sophy--so fond of you, so trusting and affectionate. It would not break
her heart, I know, to hear of all this nonsense; but it would make her
deuced miserable.” And the younger brother, a little overcome by the
picture he had conjured up, stopped for a moment to recover himself.
Very soon, however, he was at the old arguments again. “She wouldn’t
have a pleasant time of it, of course. And as for Lady M., she would be
less inclined than ever to give you anything of an allowance. You have
ascertained that there are insurmountable impediments to raising money
on the estates; and my mother--may her shadow never be less!--is a hale
woman of, if I mistake not, forty-two. What do you say to your
prospects? Inviting, eh? And just fancy what a blow it would be to the
girls. Why, ever since it was all settled, and you wrote from Rome to
tell us so, _their_ spirits, poor things, have been entirely kept up by
the idea--by the hope, I mean--of a kind of occasional home at
Fairleigh. They are very fond of Sophy; and, in short, Atty, if you
could but make up your mind to give up--well, all your interests at
Updown Paddocks, all would go on quite smoothly again. You could answer
old Dub face to face without fear of consequences; and--and I don’t
think you would regret it, Atty,”--laying his hand affectionately on his
brother’s shoulder,--“I don’t indeed. I think it pays, don’t you, old
fellow, making other people--I mean those that one’s fond of--jolly?”

“Well, yes; I fancy it does,” Arthur said musingly; “and of course one
hates this kind of thing. It’s nonsense, too, to suppose that I want to
make any change--about little Sophy, I mean. Of course I wish to marry
her, and if it’s only to be done by giving up Rough Diamond, why, I’ve
no alternative. It _is_ a bore though; upon my soul it is! He is so
certain to win! And then there’s all the nuisance of the talk with Mr.
Duberly. I say, Horace, do be a good fellow, and help me out of this. It
would do quite as well--ay, and better still--if you would settle the
business for me.”

“How do you mean ‘settle it’?” Horace asked.

“Well, tell him you know that it’s all _bosh_; that there was no harm in
life--you’d go bail for that--in my sometimes paying a visit of an
afternoon, just to have a look at the stock, to Beacham at the Paddocks;
and that--that, in short, the sooner I’m married the better.”

“And how about the Rough Diamond?” asked Horace, who felt perhaps the
least in the world suspicious regarding the destination of that
promising animal.

“O, I suppose I must sell him; not much difficulty about that. He
wouldn’t be a shadow of use to me unless I entered him; which is, of
course, out of the question now. I will see John about it this
afternoon. There are lots of men who would give as much or more than I
did for him. So that’s settled; and you may say so, if you like, with my
compliments to old Dub.”

“I’ll do it, of course, if you wish it,” said Horace, after deliberating
for a few moments on his brother’s proposal; “but I can’t help
thinking--don’t fancy, though, that I want to get off--that this is the
kind of thing a man had better do himself.”

“Do you think so? Well, then, I don’t,” said Arthur, laughing: “and that
makes all the difference. I should be sure to make a mess of it, while
you are the coolest hand possible at that kind of thing. On the whole,
it has just occurred to me, after I’ve seen John about the nag, that it
wouldn’t be half a bad move to go to Pemberton’s for a week or so. He
has been asking me to pay them a visit for weeks past, and I should
escape from the festivities, as they call them, at the Guernseys’ next
week. I hate that kind of thing infernally; and _engaged_ people in
public are always in a ridiculous position. Yes, I think I certainly
will go for a week or so to Sir Richard’s.”

“Very good,” rejoined Horace; he was wise, as I before remarked, for his
years, and therefore forbore (albeit he had his own opinion on the
subject) any comment on his brother’s sudden resolution to leave the
Chace during Lady Guernsey’s “popularity week.” “Very good; but,
Atty”--as his brother, throwing open the French window, gave evident
tokens of a desire to cut short the interview,--“you are quite sure it’s
all on the square about the colt? Of course you mean it now,” he added
hastily, as Arthur turned round a red and angry face; “but everyone is
liable to be tempted--I am sure that _I_ am--and seeing Rough Diamond
again might--”

“Not a bit of it. Don’t be afraid. I know what I’m about; only it’s not
fair to John to leave him in the dark about it: so I’m off. No occasion
to answer Mr. Duberly’s letter, I suppose, till to-morrow?”

“Well, I should say there is. However, I’ll ask my mother. It was
written to her, though what old Dub was thinking of when he did that
same is more than I can guess.”

“Lady Mill was deucedly indignant at the liberty,” said Arthur,
laughing. “Few things have ever amused me more than my mother’s anxiety
for this marriage, and her intense disgust at being brought into contact
with any of the Duberly lot.”

“I wonder which will behave the worst at the wedding, old Dub or my
lady! In quite another way he has ten times her pride, but then he is
far more deficient in polish.”

They both laughed lightly at the ideas which this remark called up; and
after a few more last words, each brother departed on his own separate
errand.

As Arthur Vavasour had predicted and felt assured, it required few
arguments, and a very little exertion of diplomatic talent, to convince
“little Sophy’s” good-natured parent that there was nothing really
_wrong_ either in the character or conduct of the “handsome young
fellow” who had won his daughter’s heart. A short conversation with that
“steady, sensible one of the brothers” (the thoughtful Horace), a little
coaxing and petting on the part of his “darling girl,” and a positive
assurance--it was “a case of honour, mind, Mr. Duberly”--more than once
repeated--from Arthur, that he had sold the two-year-old (that wonderful
Rough Diamond, of whom such great things were expected), to Colonel
Norcott, of sporting celebrity, for an almost fabulous sum--were
sufficient to set the unsuspicious, sanguine mind of “old Dub” at rest.
Arthur Vavasour was received again with open arms at Fairleigh; the
fatted calf, so to speak, was killed; and Sophy--caressing, tender
Sophy--put on her best robe to do honour to the exculpated prodigal.




CHAPTER XV.

A STORM AT THE PADDOCKS.


Arthur Vavasour, in all that he had said to his brother regarding the
state of things at Updown Paddocks, had not willingly diverged a
hair’s-breadth from the truth. It had caused him more vexation than
surprise to learn that other voices besides the “still small” whisper of
his own conscience were beginning to enlarge upon a course of conduct,
the imprudence of which--to use no harsher term--had long been manifest
to himself. Young as he was in years, Arthur had not, after a _jeunesse
orageuse_, still to learn how soon and easily the fair fame of a woman
is breathed upon and tarnished. In more ways than one is the breath of
man poisonous to his fellows. Well did Arthur Vavasour know that while
he--the heir-apparent to wealth and honour--he, the strong man, armed at
all points for the battle of life--would come unscathed out of the
tainted atmosphere of suspicion, she, the tender bird exposed to its
baneful influence, would flutter her feeble wings, and fall killed
_morally_ by the strong insidious poison. Of this melancholy truth Sophy
Duberly’s affianced husband was as cognisant as the oldest sage that
lives; and yet so selfish was he and so graceless--you perceive that
there is nothing singular and abnormal in this young man’s character and
conduct--that he could not bring himself to forego a pleasure, many of
the infallible evils to result therefrom, he, in his rare moments of
reflection, so plainly foresaw.

His first visit to the Paddocks was the consequence (and this young
sinner sometimes twisted the fact into a strange kind of condonation) of
a pressing invitation from honest John himself. Partly from former
respect and affection for the deceased Squire, and in some degree from a
liking which he took to the open cheerful manners of the heir-apparent,
John Beacham seized the earliest opportunity of making that young
gentleman “free,” as it were, of the house in which his father had been
so frequent and honoured a guest.

Nor was John’s hospitable parent behindhand in her well-meant endeavours
to make Lady Millicent’s first-born understand that he was a welcome
guest at Pear-tree House. He was always “pleasant-spoken,” she used to
say, “without an ounce of milady’s pride about him.” “Young Mr. Arthur”
besides (and that was another important point in his favour) was very
far from making himself “common” in the houses, whether large or small,
of his lady mother’s tenants. I am afraid, after all, that this old lady
was--after the fashion of her class in _her_ day--something of a lord
lover. The taste has somewhat left that class of late years, rampant as
it still is on the higher rungs of the social ladder; and in Mrs.
Beacham it was only preserved, and that feebly, by some of the
traditions and associations of the past. She entertained an idea too
that the son in whom all her hopes and pride were centred was better
looked on, by reason of his acquaintance (professionally) with the
titled ones of the land. It may be doubted, indeed, whether this
simple-minded body did not, in some vague and unreflecting way, consider
John’s friendship, or rather familiarity, with a rich earl of sporting
proclivities, and the fact of his being, so to speak, “hand and glove”
with the heir of Gillingham, decided proofs, had any been wanting, of
her son’s general superiority to his fellow-men.

The fever of expectation and delight into which the usually sedate old
woman was thrown on the first occasion when John informed her that “Mr.
Arthur” was coming to see the “stock” and “take” his luncheon at the
Paddocks, afforded some amusement and not a little surprise to Honor.
For herself she hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry that her
acquaintance with Mr. Vavasour was likely to be improved. That his
coming was not, by any means, a matter of indifference to her cannot be
denied. It could hardly be that the railway journey passed in his
company, short and uneventful though it was, had not left some trace of
it behind. Beautiful daughter of Eve though she was, never had eyes of
man rested on her face as those of Arthur Vavasour had done that day;
but although her vanity had been to a certain degree gratified by a
scrutiny which she had _felt_ rather than seen, yet she had, whilst
undergoing it, experienced a sensation of _malaise_--a nameless _fear_
almost--which caused her rather to shrink from a first meeting with
Arthur Vavasour. As regarded John, he took the event, for which his
mother was making such grand preparations, quite as a matter of course.
Beyond the fact that Mr. Arthur was the Squire’s son, and one to whom
the farmer gave credit for possessing hereditary virtues, the handsome
young man, who, as all the country knew, was engaged to the heiress of
Fairleigh, was no more to him than any other visitor at the Paddocks.
Not that honest John was the very least in the world what is called “a
leveller.” To “even” himself with those socially above him never
entered his head. The ambition which of all others is the most apt to
“o’erleap itself and fall o’ the other side”--the ambition, namely, of a
_churl_ to be a gentleman--was an infirmity quite unknown to the simple
mind of the Sandyshire farmer. He was absorbed, besides, rationally and
wholesomely, in his business, and that business, as John was quite
conscious, he thoroughly understood. A sense of superiority (that sense,
let it be remembered, being indorsed by the fiat of public opinion) is
apt to induce (even though that superiority may be evidenced in a
comparatively humble manner) a certain sense also of independence. This
sense, then, was a strong and healthy resident in John Beacham’s breast.
He knew--none better--that his knowledge of the business in which his
soul delighted was anything but superficial, and it was to him a source
of pride that his opinion in equine matters had grown to be treated as a
law. I repeat that John Beacham was no “leveller”. He was quite as ready
as his neighbours to “give tribute to whom tribute, and honour to whom
honour,” is due; but it was pretty much the same to him, provided that
the individual in question knew _something_ about horse-flesh, whether
guest of his were prince or peasant, duke or dog-breeder. His thoughts
ran entirely on his stock, and his mind was so fully engrossed by the
future of his yearlings that he felt literally none of that common
sensation of “not-at-homeishness” which is apt to render individuals in
John’s somewhat anomalous position both awkward and uncomfortable.

Few men in any rank of life could be pleasanter as a host than the owner
of Updown Paddocks. At his hospitable board, the rich and “great,” and
even the self-important, “forgot to remember” that they were
condescending. A native politeness induced by entire forgetfulness of
self placed him on a par with the most exalted, the most fastidious, and
the most sensitive. But, above all things, let it be remembered that he
was _true_--true to the backbone. The air of the “stable,” as I have
before said, had instilled no principles of trickery into John Beacham’s
breast, and, as Cecil Vavasour had once been heard to remark, he would
as soon expect one of John’s _fillies_ to be capable of entering into a
conspiracy to defraud, as that his old friend would in a single instance
depart from the strict rules of honour and integrity.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Now then, Honor, look sharp; I can’t have any dawdling to-day. When
gentlemen come to lunch at the Paddocks, they expect, and so does John,
to find everything good. You won’t soil your white hands, that I don’t
think likely, with helping in the setting on; but you might gather a few
flowers for the beanpots all the same, and if there’s time afterwards
you can change your gown afore Mr. Arthur comes. A silk one would look a
deal better than that washy muslin. I’m sure John, poor fellow, gave you
plenty of smart dresses, and you needn’t begrudge the wearing one of
them now and then.”

Honor, who had already learned that there is ofttimes wisdom in keeping
silence even from good words, proceeded with cheerful alacrity to the
execution of one at least of her appointed tasks. The tasteless
arrangement of those same “beanpots” had long been to her a source of
minor discomfort, and often had she longed to work, with deft and dainty
fingers, a reformation in the huge overgrown posies with which it was
Mrs. Beacham’s pleasure to adorn the windows of the “best parlour” in
the old farm-house. A very snug and pleasant room it was, and would have
been a pretty one, could Honor have effected the change she was often
planning, namely, that of introducing French windows instead of the
old-fashioned lattices, which let in so little light, and impeded the
view outside so greatly. And, as if to make the room still darker,
there were, ever and always, those dreadful beanpots standing never an
inch out of their respective places on the spider-legged pembroke tables
in front of the latticed panes. It was wonderful, Honor sometimes
thought, how flowers could be made to look so little attractive as those
which old Mrs. Beacham was in the habit of packing together for the
adornment of her show parlour. The old lady’s floral tastes were of the
massive and gorgeous school. She delighted in peonies, and many-coloured
dahlias were her passion. Honor had more than once attempted a reform in
this delicate branch of household duty; but Mrs. Beacham, who had no
opinion of her daughter-in-law’s taste, had hitherto declined her
offers, and nothing short of a press of business on the occasion of Mr.
Vavasour’s visit would have caused the busy old autocrat to break
through a fixed habit of her life.

Honor wondered to herself, as, with her large garden-hat shading her
eyes from the sun, and a flower-basket on her arm, she bent over a
favourite plant rich with pinks in brilliant blossom, dropping at the
same time one of the treasures into her basket, whether Mr. Vavasour had
the least idea what a commotion his coming to the house for half an hour
was causing. She caught herself marvelling too whether he liked the
smell of roast beef and cabbage: for the house had been redolent of
both when Honor gladly exchanged the scene of bustle and confusion, and
the aroma of a meal more plentiful than refined, for the fresh air of
heaven and the perfumes of the roses and the pinks. She did not hurry
over her task. There was time enough before the arrival of their guest
for a little more dallying with the flowers, a few more quiet thoughts
over how she would look, and what _he_--that half-dreaded new
acquaintance--would say to her. Honor had not the slightest intention of
complying with the last of her mother-in-law’s injunctions; the “washy”
dress--it was of soft blue muslin, and the girl looked like a bright
azure flower in it, as she flitted about between the rows of
fruit-bushes, culling the dear old “common” flowers that are still to be
found in such ancient kitchen-gardens as the one that appertained to
Pear-tree House--the “washy” dress that had provoked Mrs. Beacham’s
animadversion was not, Honor determined, to be cast aside. Since the
affair of the bonnet, she had resisted all attempts at interference with
her toilet. The day too, as the sun rose higher and higher in the
heavens, had grown oppressively hot, so hot that her fair face was a
little flushed, and she loosened the strings of her hat that the light
summer breeze might blow more freely round her throat. The coolest spot
in all the garden was the terrace-walk, a little raised above the level
of a shady lane, into which those above could look over the trimmed
sprays of what John--who loved the place, and smoked his quiet pipe
there often in the summer evenings--was wont to call the “nightingale
hedge.” With Honor too the terrace was a favourite resort: she would
take her book there, or her work, and sit dreamily on the rough stone
bench for hours, till summoned home by the shrill voice of her
mother-in-law, who, being essentially a woman of action, had no patience
with the “idle ways of John’s silly chit of a wife.” On that especial
day, however, Honor had no time to waste in reverie. She would, she
thought only rest for a moment under the shade of the old thorn-tree;
the sun shone so glaringly down upon the teeming apple-trees, on the
clean-kept rows of strawberry-beds sloping downwards to the gravelled
walks, yellow and glowing in the midday heat. Honor could not, however,
long remain, pleasant as it was, in that cool breezy place. Only a
moment to pluck a sprig of sweet syringa from a shrub of ancient date,
growing near the hawthorn-tree; only a moment to hear--Well! What did
she hear? Why, the slow footsteps of a horse, advancing with even pace
along the lane below! Instinctively she rose from her seat, and peering
over the hedge, she recognised in the equestrian, who politely raised
his hat from his head (for a simultaneous movement had caused him to
look towards the terrace), the figure of Arthur Vavasour.

It was too late to retreat, her blushing face was just above him, and
she could only hope that he would not think her very _missyish_ and
forward. _That_ road--the one that he had chosen--was not the usual one
from Gillingham to the Paddocks, and this, Honor, feeling and seeming a
good deal confused and awkward, endeavoured to make him understand. She
had forgotten, or rather she had never heard, the proverb, that _qui
s’excuse, s’accuse_; but Arthur both remembered and applied it. It is
always a temptation to jump at conclusions that are flattering to our
vanity, and the “jump” on this occasion was far too alluring to be
withstood. Arthur had in good truth very little grounds for supposing
that Honor had betaken herself to that quiet spot for the purpose of
awaiting his arrival. He was profoundly ignorant, beyond the simple fact
that she was beautiful, of all that appertained to or regarded John
Beacham’s wife. Unfortunately too he had been a good deal thrown among a
class of women, who would have taken no great shame to themselves had
they been caught in the deed for which he gave that pretty,
unsuspecting Honor credit. Arthur had met with a good deal of petting
and spoiling from the sex in general. He was handsome, and he knew it.
Honor was looking tantalisingly lovely and attractive as she stammered
forth her silly, smiling excuses; so--it was foolish certainly, but he
was not yet “of age,” remember, and it would have been so “muffish” to
ride on as if she were not there--so Arthur Vavasour, following the
impulse of the moment, and meaning, as he would have said, no more than
to be “civil,” contrived (without awkwardness, which would have been
fatal in such a case) to spring with his feet upon the saddle, and to
bring his face on a level with Honor’s.

She could not help laughing; it was “such a foolish thing to do;” and
then there came, after he had shaken hands with her over the hedge, the
fear that the horse would move on, and that there would be an
“accident.”

“He might move on--O, please don’t wait!” she said, feeling a little
smitten with what struck her as an act of chivalry on the part of that
good-looking young aristocrat.

“He won’t stir--he knows better,” Arthur said, as he steadied himself
against a strong ash sapling that jutted out from the bank. “Steady,
will you!” to the animal, who was picking out the tender blades of
grass for his own especial eating from among the ground-ivy, the
delicate cranesbill, and the wild violets with which the pretty rural
fence was lined. “He knows this road, and so do I, of old. Jack was my
father’s cob, Mrs. Beacham--one of _your_ father-in-law’s breeding, and
he used always to come this way to the Paddocks.”

It was a pretty way--the prettiest, Honor thought and said--from the
Castle; not that she had ever been the whole road--far from it, she
said. It was a beautiful way, people told her, all through, but she had
never been nearer to the Castle in her life than the end of
Pender’s-lane. John did promise to take her farther when he had the
time, and she was going to learn to ride, and horses were allowed in
many places inside the Chace where a carriage wasn’t, so John said, and
if so, why she might some day see, without giving trouble, she added
meekly, a little of the beautiful place of which she had heard so much.

Arthur professed himself delighted to think that he could afford the
wife of his old friend pleasure in any way; mentally regretting that,
owing to his insecure footing on old Jack’s saddle, he could not be
quite as delightful as he wished, or as the occasion deserved.

“It will be awfully jolly to have you on horseback,” he said, “and
Beacham will mount you in something like style.”

“O yes,” Honor said eagerly, “there is a chestnut--such a beauty! John
calls her Lady Meg--that he is breaking for me; not a pony--quite a tall
horse; and--O Mr. Vavasour, I told you so! Have your hurt yourself?”

She was answered by a laugh from below, and by the cheerily-spoken
words, “All right!” as Arthur, who had suddenly, and _nolens volens_,
found himself reseated in his saddle, rode away.

Once more left to the companionship of her own thoughts, Honor began to
think how foolish it had all been; and then came the speculation as to
how Mrs. Beacham would take the news (for it seemed a very important
event to simple-minded Honor) of Mr. Vavasour’s escapade. If Honor had
not been afraid of her stepmother (which she was), it would all have
been plain-sailing enough. It had been a purely accidental meeting--no
harm had been intended--and certainly Honor could not be called to
account for the foolish risking of Mr. Vavasour’s bones. All this, and
more, the perplexed and tired girl repeated to herself as she walked
slowly on towards the house, thinking how best to tell the little story
which was already assuming in her eyes the features of an “event.”

To her surprise--for she had fancied he would be waylaid by John, and
carried off at once to see the “stock”--she perceived, through one of
the parlour-windows, Mr. Vavasour sitting on the ponderous sofa covered
with peony-patterned chintz, and in amiable converse with his hostess,
who was doing her best, in more ways than one, to entertain him. In a
few more minutes Honor was in the room, and--_mirabile dictu!_--shaking
hands with Arthur Vavasour. It was very evident that for some reason or
other--_what_, Honor would have found it difficult to determine--he had
kept the fact of that very innocent meeting on the terrace-walk a
secret. Honor hardly knew whether to be relieved or sorry that he had
done so. That she could do otherwise than follow his lead, never for a
moment, strange as it may seem, occurred to her. The nature of this
young wife was rather an ease-loving one, and to be spared the listening
to Mrs. Beacham’s diatribes was felt by her to be a great boon; so she,
unwisely it must be owned, held her peace, keeping Arthur’s secret
(alas, that there should have been one, of even the most insignificant
description, between those two!) alike from the cantankerous old lady,
and the husband who had as yet given her no cause to fear that he would
ever be severe either on her follies or her faults.




CHAPTER XVI.

THE ELEMENTS WERE IN FAULT.


From the time of that chance meeting, Arthur Vavasour became a very
frequent visitor at the Paddocks. Ostensibly there was generally some
business excuses for the “calls” that were made so often, and lasted so
long. There was so frequently an ailing or an unsound horse, concerning
which an opinion was required; and then, as we already know, the
Paddocks lay so conveniently on the road to Fairleigh, that it was
hardly surprising that poor Sophy’s somewhat fickle lover should stop to
rest him on the way.

There is no denying the truth that young Mrs. Beacham did greatly enjoy
Mr. Vavasour’s society. They had so many (the old reason!) tastes in
common. He had read the books _she_ liked, and he delighted in less
commonplace and more classic music than “The soldier’s tear,” and that
old, old “Banks of Allan Waters,” which Honor was so tired of. His voice
too, when he spoke, was so soft and low--an “excellent thing” in man as
well as woman--and that same voice sounded doubly pleasant after a
morning spent in listening to Mrs. Beacham’s querulous tones and harsh
Yorkshire dialect.

It was surprising to herself how soon Honor felt at her ease with Arthur
Vavasour, and how short a time had been necessary to make her forget
that he was the son of that formidable Lady Millicent; while she--but
what had been _her_ origin Honor believed herself never destined to
learn--it was enough that she had been but a humble teacher to some
farm-house children, and that John, that best and kindest of created
beings, had taken her, penniless and almost friendless as she was, to
his home and to his heart.

There is something not altogether unsuggestive in the fact that John
Beacham’s bride was, at that period of her short married life, for ever
reminding herself that she “owed everything to John.” It almost seemed
as though she were throwing up a line of defence, a formidable battery,
to guard against any future attacks upon his peace. He was so really
kind to her, not tenderly demonstrative certainly, and anything but
sentimental; but she could _trust_ him so entirely. John was never
capricious, and rarely hasty or rough of speech; he never “bothered”
either about trifles--a delightful negative quality which many wives
never appreciate properly till they have experienced the bore of having
a womanly, housekeeping kind of helpmate “worrying” about a home, the
space and means of which are necessarily limited. That John Beacham was
all, and more than all, this, Honor was constantly repeating to herself.
Perhaps--it was more than likely--she was anxious to hide, under this
heap of estimable qualities, the aggravation of some of poor John’s
trifling defects of _manner_, his few uncourtly habits, his sometimes
ill-pronounced words. Be this as it may, Honor betrayed no sign, even to
herself, that she would have desired any change in one so excellent and
unselfish as her husband; it is even probable that, had not the peccant
places been pointed by force of contrast, she would have found little to
regret in John’s cheery voice and genial, though untutored, manners.

One great pleasure--_the_ pleasure of which Honor had spoken with such
girlish glee to Arthur Vavasour--that, namely, of riding on
horseback--had been without loss of time vouchsafed to the breeder’s
wife. She had a “wonderful figure for a horse” he had said from the
first, and when to that was added the conviction that, though she had
not been in the “saddle from a child,” his wife’s seat and hand were
perfect, John’s delight was extreme. The “teaching” proved a
comparatively easy matter; Lady Meg was quiet as a lamb; and very soon
(for John was often too busy to accompany her) Honor was trusted on
horseback, with only a small farm-boy as attendant, to take her
equestrian pleasure where she chose.

The only individual to whom this new state of affairs gave any umbrage
was old Mrs. Beacham, who, when John did not happen to be present, grew
very bitter on the subject of Honor’s favourite pleasure.

“It’s more than I ever had--and I a Yorkshire-woman born--is a horse of
my own,” she said one day to Honor, as the latter stood waiting for Lady
Meg, and looking very pretty and graceful at the window, her long green
habit trailing on the floor, and her gauntleted hand (John had _got her
up_ beautifully) playing with her little dandified whip. “I wonder John
can allow of such a thing as your riding about the country in this way.
Things _have_ got turned upside down with a vengeance since I was
young.”

“John likes it,” Honor said, turning round with a smile that disclosed
two rows of pearly teeth, and which ought to have mollified the sour old
lady’s temper. “I never should have thought of riding if it hadn’t been
for John, and now I do love it so! I don’t think I ever liked anything
half so much.”

“You’d like anything that kep you idle, that’s my belief. You’d leave
everything for other people to do, you would. Anybody else may slave
themselves to death, so as you keep your hands white and don’t bend your
back to work.”

“Now, that _is_ hard,” replied Honor, trying to laugh off the old
woman’s irritation. “I won’t bear any more of John’s sins! Why, don’t
you remember, mother”--she called her so, to please John--“don’t you
remember how he came home one day and found me rubbing the table, and
how angry he was, and how he said that neither you nor I were ever to do
such things again, for that, thank God, he was rich enough to pay for
servants to do the housework? Dear John! he always tries to please
everybody.”

“More fool he! Everybody indeed! That’s the sort of thing that brings
people to the workhouse. _I_ was brought up different. _I_ never could
see, not I, the good of young people being idle. Work keeps ’em out of
mischief, and hinders white hands, which ain’t of no use as far as I can
see, except to make the gentlemen stare at ’em.”

It was perhaps fortunate for Honor that the old lady could not see the
crimson blush that mantled over cheek and brow at this coarse and
uncalled-for remark. Had that been the case, Mrs. Beacham would have
suspected--what was indeed the truth--that her daughter-in-law was quite
conscious of, and felt indeed rather gratified by, the fact that one
gentleman at least had both looked at and admired the taper fingers,
white and soft as those of the finest lady in the land, to which Mrs.
Beacham alluded.

At that moment, and while Honor’s face was still turned towards the
window, a few heavy drops were seen to fall against the panes, and the
prolonged roll of distant thunder gave tokens of a coming tempest.

“O, there’s the rain! How dreadfully provoking! Just when I was going
out! What shall I do?”

“What will you do? Why, bear it to be sure, and be thankful you’ve
nothing worse to bear. I’m going across the meadow to see James Stokes’
whitlow. It will be long enough before such a helpless thing as you has
the stomach for such sights;” and so, grumbling as she went, the busy
old soul departed--to do her justice, she was always ready to _help_--on
her errand of mercy.

Honor sat down before the work-table, which was strewed all over with
the marks of woman’s industry and handicraft--men’s lambswool stockings
in readiness for mending, a corner of hideous patchwork protruding from
an open basket, and a general aspect around of rather unpicturesque
disorder. It was part of Honor’s daily employment to “tidy the tables”
after one of Mrs. Beacham’s mending mornings was brought to a close,
and, but for the rattling thunder overhead, she would have proceeded to
her task at once. The noise of the storm, however, together with the
solitude of the room, overcame and oppressed her--the vivid flashes of
lightning, darting across her face, dazzled her eyes; so resting her
face upon her outspread arms, she endeavoured, as best she could, to
shut out the startling tokens of the tempest. But all in vain. Honor,
though not (as it is called in common parlance) _afraid_ of thunder and
lightning, had it in her to be morbidly sensitive to an atmosphere
heavily laden, as was the case at present, with electric fluid. Her
head, which had begun to ache violently, seemed as if bound with a
circlet of iron, and she felt miserably depressed and nervous--so
nervous, that for almost the first time in her life she experienced a
dread of being alone. It was intensely foolish and cowardly and
absurd--of _that_ Honor would have been the first, in her sober senses,
to acknowledge the truth; but she was hardly herself just then, the
thunder boomed with such startling violence over the old house, and the
wind, which had commenced with a warning murmur, was howling amidst the
trees, as it seemed, in very rage and fury. Truly it was an awful storm.
Each thunderclap sounded louder and more vengeful than the last, till
gathering, as it would appear, its forces for a final outburst, such a
volley rattled over Honor’s bent-down head, that in a perfect agony of
terror she sprang upon her feet, and was rushing from the room when her
steps were arrested by the sight of a human figure advancing rapidly
from the open doorway.

A real cordial, even in that moment of bewilderment and fear, the
cheerful voice of Arthur Vavasour seemed to Honor when he said lightly--

“What, all alone in the storm? No joke, is it? By Jove, I don’t know
that I was ever out in a worse.”

She tried to recover herself; it was mortifying, hateful, to be
thought such a silly coward; but her nerves were overwrought
(meteorological influences have a peculiar effect sometimes on certain
delicately-organised constitutions); and when another thunderclap, still
fiercer than the preceding one, crashed over the old-tiled roof, and the
room was all ablaze with dazzling light, Honor, pale and trembling, and
utterly bereft, for the moment, of self-command, uttered a faint cry of
terror, and hid her white face against the nearest screen--that screen
chancing, unluckily, to be Arthur Vavasour’s shoulder!

It was the wrong place for the wrong head certainly; nor did it rest
there long. A slight, the very faintest, pressure of the hand that had
in all loyalty taken hers, to reassure and strengthen the failing
nerves, was sufficient to recall the trembling girl to a sense of the
error into which the wild instinct born of alarm had led her. The storm,
too, had suddenly abated in violence, the thunder was already dying away
in the distance; and Honor, viewing her conduct from a commonsense as
well as a commonplace point of view, felt thoroughly ashamed of herself.

“I can’t think how I could be so foolish,” she said, with a blush that
made her look, Arthur thought, more beautiful than ever.

He laughed. He was very anxious to make her feel comfortable as regarded
that quite unintentional act of trifling familiarity.

“I don’t know what you call foolish, Mrs. Beacham,” he said. “It strikes
me that a woman who could stand such a row as that must be a very
strong-minded party indeed. I didn’t above half like it myself, and
having a lively recollection of the day when I was a small boy--when the
big oak in your husband’s meadow was struck with lightning, and a man
killed under it--I thought that a wetting was better than that, so I cut
along through the rain and--here I am.”

He had scarcely finished when another step, a _masterful_ and heavy one,
was heard in the passage, and John Beacham, out of breath and wet to the
skin (a calamity concerning which, greatly to his mother’s displeasure,
he was never known to trouble himself), hurried into the room.

After shaking hands heartily with Mr. Vavasour, the master of the house
set about accounting for his sudden return and the plight in which he
found himself.

“I was away at Leigh,” he said, wiping his face and head with a large
coloured-silk pocket handkerchief, “when the storm began, and I saw at
once it was going to be a sneezer. Says I to myself, ‘The missus won’t
like this;’ not that I had any particular reason for thinking so.
There’s been no thunderstorm since we knew each other--eh, Honor? But
somehow it struck me that you might be frightened, so I told the ostler,
though it was raining cats and dogs by that time, to bring out
Scrapegrace in a jiffy. Tim thought I was mad, I do believe. You see,”
he added with an arch glance at his audience, “he hadn’t a little wife
at home to trouble his head about and make an old fool of him. Says he,
‘You’ll be wet through, sir, before you’ve been out five minutes;’ and
so, of course, I was. But what did it matter? I never troubled myself
about a wet jacket, and Scrapegrace isn’t the boy to be afraid of a
flash of lightning, so I threw my leg over the saddle and--here I am.”

“Here I am!” the very words (a singularity, trifling as it may appear,
which struck Honor’s sensitive imagination at once) that Arthur Vavasour
had used while accounting for _his_ opportune presence at the farm. The
two men were standing one on either side of her, and the marked contrast
between them impressed itself for the first time on Honor’s mind and
heart. There was John, large-framed and strong of bone; his rather
massive features redeemed from plainness by the frank and kind
expression which softened and almost idealised them; his skin roughened
by exposure to the weather; and his hands, usually guiltless of gloves,
brown, muscular, and manly. His very dress, moist and rain-stained, and
his shirt-collar limp and blackened with the dingy drippings from the
good man’s “wideawake,” told against his personal appearance; whilst, on
the contrary, Arthur’s _tout ensemble_, from the crown of his dark
waving hair to the tips of his well-made, though not by any means
dandified, boots, was as perfect as care and money and taste, to say
nothing of an excellent _material_, in the shape of his own handsome
face and graceful figure, could make it.

Honor _felt_ the contrast, and a pang of self-reproach darted through
her breast: of self-reproach and shame; shame that her head had rested,
though only for a moment, against that well-made coat; and ah, far more
fatal impulse than that which shame can give--the impulse that closed
her lips against the avowal of the deed!

And yet, in very truth, there was nothing to tell; and, moreover, it
would have given the matter far more importance than it deserved, had
Honor made a small descriptive narrative, for her husband’s benefit, of
what had occurred. And so, for a second time, where her relations with
Arthur Vavasour were concerned, she held her peace; and the
consciousness that there was this secret between them, albeit that
secret was one of so very trivial a description, lent the kind of charm
to the intercourse between Honor and Arthur Vavasour which is never
without its fruits. Arthur had a sincere regard for John Beacham. The
former was what is called an honourable man, but he was only twenty-one,
and at that age, though flesh is in one sense weak, it is terribly
strong too. Honor was wonderfully fair, and the man had not courage to
flee the temptation which the woman, beguiling him in her simple
ignorance, was daily so unfortunate as to set before him.

Verily it was time that interference came; time that Horace, strong in
brotherly affection, spoke his mind without fear of consequences to
Arthur Vavasour.




CHAPTER XVII.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS.


The intelligence which soon after reached the Paddocks, namely, that
Arthur Vavasour was about to leave Gillingham, took Honor by surprise.
Not that she was ignorant of the all-important fact that the time was
drawing near when the heir-apparent was to take upon himself the duties
and responsibilities of matrimony. There was nothing new to Switcham and
its neighbourhood in the idea that their young landlord was at the early
age of twenty-one to pass at once from the thoughtless irresponsibility
of boyhood to the duller dignity of a man; and yet for all that, and
though Honor had often heard her husband’s friends and neighbours talk
over the coming event, she never seemed quite to realise the fact that
Arthur Vavasour was going to be married. One reason of this might be
that the future husband of Sophy Duberly was not in the habit of himself
alluding to the approaching change. As Honor sometimes said to herself,
he seemed to entirely forget what was hanging over his head. His spirits
were often fitful; at one time bright and joyous, at another depressed
almost to zero. Honor, remembering his engagement, would often marvel at
his fits of absence, his look--so strange in one so young--of brooding
care; for during the many weeks which Arthur Vavasour had spent either
at the Castle or as a guest of his future father-in-law, Honor had seen
a great deal of Miss Duberly’s intended husband. There had been nothing
conspicuous or curiosity-rousing in their intimacy. Other gentlemen came
and went, and were offered lunch (that meal at the Paddocks was famed
far and wide for excellence) by hospitable John Beacham; and other
gentlemen might, if they were so disposed, join that pretty,
modest-looking little wife of his in her daily rides on the Lady Meg.
For how long, or rather for how short a time these two young persons
would, under less propitious circumstances, have escaped the heavy
censure which their thoughtlessness deserved, it would be hard to say.
It was a great thing for both that one at least was but a bird of
passage. Very soon (in a few short weeks only), Mr. Vavasour was to be
married; and in the mean time there were plenty--a glorious safeguard
for endangered reputations--of other things and people, besides the
farmer’s wife, to be talked about. There was the _trousseau_ of the
bride, the number and beauty of her presents, and--still more
immediately interesting to the young of all degrees in that division of
Sandyshire--there were the anticipated festivities at Danescourt, in
honour, as was almost openly declared by the popular Countess of
Guernsey, of Arthur Vavasour’s “coming of age.”

Honor Beacham’s little head had at that time fully enough (like those of
her neighbours) to occupy it. She was too young, too fresh-hearted and
inexperienced, not to look forward with a keen anticipation of delight
to the out-of-doors amusements that were to be enjoyed in Lord
Guernsey’s park, to which all the “respectable” inhabitants of the
neighbourhood, the “big” tenants, not only of Gillingham and Danescourt,
but also the most highly considered, that is to say, the most prosperous
of the Leigh tradesmen had been invited. Danescourt would in former
days, before railroads were, have been deemed almost out of visiting
distance from Switcham; but steam had done its usual work of
approximation, and now it required but the short space of twenty minutes
to convey the travellers from the furthest point of Switcham parish to
the great lodge-gates of “the Court.”

But though young Mrs. Beacham was by no means insensible to the coming
pleasure in a few days to be vouchsafed to her unpresuming class, still
there remained, it is to be feared, more space in her mind than was
altogether advisable for thoughts of Arthur Vavasour and his approaching
“change” of circumstances and life. She had grown, very different as
were their positions in life, to know him (as she fancied) very
thoroughly. From the first she had felt and seemed to herself to be the
equal in _degree_, as it is called, of Arthur Vavasour. Whether it were
that her individual nature was delicate and refined, or that, as the
foolish creature loved to think, her birth, of the particulars of which
she knew so little, was one sufficiently “gentle” to account both for
the peculiarity of her tastes and the gracefulness of her appearance,
must remain for the present an open question; one thing, however, is
certain, namely, that she and Arthur Vavasour were not only rarely at a
loss for subjects of conversation, but that never once in all their
intercourse had he caused her to remember either by word or look that
his position in life was more exalted than her own. Take it altogether,
in spite of Mrs. Beacham’s crossness, and although John had been often
very busy among his horses and his men, those two months had been a
singularly happy time to Honor. She had enjoyed to a degree, which only
to look back upon was a delight, those delicious rides in evening-time
through the shady lanes, those canters over the springy turf in the
beautiful “Chace” which Arthur already talked of as his own, those
strolls about the pleasant Paddock garden, when just a tinge of
sentiment--of _sentiment_ guessed at rather than expressed--mingled with
Arthur’s more commonplace words, and lent the charm of charms, although
she knew it not, to all that Honor gathered from her companion’s lips.
She was indeed, and for that matter so also was John himself, thoroughly
happy in the cheerful society of Arthur Vavasour. He was the familiar
friend, the ever-welcome guest both of “master” and of “young missus,”
and “as a friend” he deemed it his duty to impart to her the fact of his
approaching marriage, and that he must, before many days would be past
over, bid adieu to Gillingham.

She was in the garden that afternoon, and they (Honor and her friend)
were standing together side by side on the famous terrace, when the
latter said abruptly:

“Before I see you again, Mrs. Beacham, how many things will have
changed! I shall be a married man--how absurd it sounds!--tied and bound
by the chain of a wife!” and he laughed nervously as he said the word.

Honor, feeling rather confused, contrived to murmur something about not
exactly seeing the absurdity of the measure proposed. It _might_ be
entertaining, certainly, but she did not understand why Mr. Vavasour
laughed.

“Well, I suppose I didn’t mean precisely absurd, but unsatisfactory
somehow--startling almost at my age, you know--to be bothered by a
wife.”

Honor’s sense of the ridiculous was struck by the word “startling,” and
she laughed; such a musical laugh it was! Arthur thought she never
looked so pretty as when she was amused.

“I suppose you have been warned in time?” she said; “it hasn’t taken you
entirely by surprise that there exists a young lady whose lot it is to
be Mrs. Arthur Vavasour.”

His quick eye glanced at her for a moment. Was there a shade, the
slightest in the world, of _pique_ in her words and tone? He could not
say. Honor was not in the least prone to sarcasm, but her manner had a
little taken him by surprise, and he answered hesitatingly:

“Warned! yes, of course I was warned--warned by my own follies, my own
actual idiotcy, that I must do something of the sort. I suppose you know
all about it--all that the world reports, at least. How that--I know one
oughtn’t to say such things, but you are so safe--that there isn’t much
love in the matter. Old Duberly is as rich as a Jew--”

Honor opened wide the eyes of astonishment and consternation.

“Rich! yes, I know he is rich; but what is that to you--you, with all
that money, that beautiful place? O, Mr. Vavasour, you never can be
going to marry because the lady is rich! Think how dreadful not to love
her! And people say, too, that Miss Duberly is young and pretty. Ah!”
she continued musingly, “I know now what Mrs. Beacham must have meant
when she said something of the kind; but I never, never would have
believed it, unless you had told me so yourself.”

“Then don’t believe it now,” he said, drawing a step nearer, for he was
touched and gratified by her implied compliment to the disinterestedness
of his character and motives. “It is quite out of my line, I hope, to do
anything of the kind. But, you see, fathers are different from
sons--_they_ look forward, which we don’t; and besides, I quite well
remember mine saying to me once that he considered it rather a
misfortune than otherwise for a man to be in love with the girl he was
going to marry.”

“Did he say so? And John always tells me that the Squire was such a
kind, good man--the kindest and best he ever knew.”

“Yes, he was all that, but I fancy he was cold too; some people, you
know, become cold--from disappointment, I suppose, or something--as they
grow old. But about old Duberly’s money there’s a good deal to be said.
You see,” he added, anxious to preserve the character for
disinterestedness which he was conscious of not deserving, “that there
is a likelihood of a title (that of Baron de Vavasour), which has been
in my father’s branch of the family since the Wars of the Roses, being
disputed after the death of a very old relation, who now bears the
honours. My father was very anxious that I should some day be a peer of
the realm--why, I never could understand; and as my mother does not
trouble herself much about my advancement in life, I shall have to look
out for myself.”

“And why? I am very stupid and ignorant about such matters, or I daresay
I should guess.”

“I don’t know why you should, and I’m afraid I’m boring you all this
time; but the fact is that in this enlightened country of ours enormous
wealth--and the two fortunes united would be what is called
colossal--can almost command a peerage. But there is a better reason
than the one I have just been telling you of for my marrying an
heiress--a reason which anyone connected with old Duberly might be proud
of. They say he might be made a peer any day he liked, _only_ from his
high-mindedness, his wonderful liberality to the poor, and the excellent
use he makes of an income of eighty thousand a year. A wonderful lot of
money, isn’t it?” he continued, as he and Honor sauntered on towards the
high holly-hedge which bounded the garden on the east side, and was ever
a pleasant shelter from both wind and sun.

He did not expect to be answered--there could be no two opinions
regarding the marvellous proportions of Mr. Duberly’s income; and
indeed, his thoughts as well as Honor’s had wandered far enough away
both from ambitious hopes and peers expectant.

“What a bore this going away is!” Arthur said after a pause; “I’m a
wonderful fellow to get fond of a place. Do you get fond of a place? I
mean a place one lives much in, you know.”

“I think it depends very much upon the people we are with,” Honor said,
and the next moment regretted her thoughtless words; for Arthur said
eagerly:

“Exactly! just my feeling. It is not the ‘where,’ but the ‘who.’ I
should never have grown so fond of the Paddocks if--but you are not
going in, Mrs. Beacham? Do take one more turn--only one. It is such a
beautiful evening, and the old lady cannot be so unreasonable as to
expect you will waste it in the house. Hark! there is the first note of
the nightingale. Won’t you stay and listen to it for the last time with
me?”

His voice sounded very soft and persuasive, but Honor, usually so pliant
to the wishes of others, was inexorable. It was very pleasant there
among the roses. The summer air fanned her cheek with such a sweet
refreshing breath, and it was hard to change it for the low-ceilinged
parlour where Mrs. Beacham was expecting her, and which that worthy lady
(who entertained rather an objection to fresh air in rooms) had a
peculiar talent for rendering “stuffy.” Above all, it was hard to say
“good-bye” to Arthur Vavasour--hard to leave her pleasant friend--the
friend who “understood” her, and who had so often, with such quiet,
unobtrusive kindness, saved her from the annoyance of old Mrs. Beacham’s
“worrying ways.”

“I think I must go in now,” she said quietly, though her heart was
beating fast. “I have been out long enough;” and her step was not very
steady as she drew nearer to the house which, without _him_, she could
not have told Arthur truly that she loved.

He stopped, however, before they were within view of the windows, and
exclaimed with angry vehemence,

“I shall say good-bye here, I hate public leave-takings. You will give
me your hand, at least?”

Poor Honor! Her very anxiety to do right--her instinctive dread that
something, she knew not what, might be said by Arthur that John’s wife
ought not to listen to--did her ill service at that crisis of her life.
Had she pursued her walk with an even step, and without the blushing
agitation that betrayed her inward feelings, Arthur would never have
taken courage to address her in those petulant and peremptory words. She
was frightened, half angry, and half fascinated by his vehemence; but
she never thought of withholding the hand he asked for. Why should he
doubt her giving it? What had happened during that short quarter of an
hour to change the friendly relations that had subsisted between them?
It was all strange, and sudden, and bewildering; and tears of regret and
reproach glistened in Honor’s upturned lashes.

She looked this way and that, in pretty and very manifest confusion, her
soft red lips slightly pouting; it was so vexatious to be silly, and to
have nothing to say just when she so particularly wanted to utter
something to the purpose; and then Mr. Vavasour--it was so rude and
tiresome--would keep looking at her so! If he would only go! Honor felt
quite sure _that_ would be a relief. She had never in life before felt
so thoroughly uncomfortable.

He spoke at last--what an age those few short moments had
appeared!--and, still with her hand in his, said in a low voice, and
feelingly, despite the _badinage_ that neutralised its tone of
sentiment,

“I hope you don’t mean quite to forget me, Mrs. Beacham? I’ve had a very
jolly hour or two here with--John, since I’ve been at home this time. I
shall think of you the day I’m turned off; perhaps you’ll remember to
return the compliment?”

The words were trivial and foolish enough, but he pointed their meaning
by such a searching gaze into Honor’s violet eyes, that she turned her
head away abashed, and angry both with herself and him. Quickening her
step, they were in another moment in full view of the “parlour” window,
and then, and not till then, she took courage to reply:

“John will be very sorry when you’re gone--he said so only yesterday;
and--and we shall all be glad to know that you are happy. Good-bye, Mr.
Vavasour, I _must_ go in now.” But suddenly recollecting the claims of
her mother-in-law to respectful observance, “Won’t you come and see Mrs.
Beacham before you go? She is old, you know, and old people don’t like
to be overlooked.”

Arthur hesitated a moment, and then declined the well-intended offer. He
was in no mood for tolerating Mrs. Beacham’s old-world platitudes, and
twaddling lamentations on his departure. His approaching marriage would
also, as he was well aware, be brought on the _tapis_, and of that
subject he had for the nonce had more than enough. Arthur was
good-natured, lively, and popular--indeed, the heir was generally
allowed to be far more affable than Mr. Horace--but, like most young men
who are born to a “position,” and whom the world has helped to spoil,
Arthur Vavasour did not “go in” much for spoiling others. If it did not
interfere with his own comfort or convenience, he would be wonderfully
kind and civil to a dull old man, or even to a disagreeable old woman;
but as a rule, and when he was inclined to be otherwise employed, he
forgot, or altogether ignored, the claims of useless people on his
notice. His conduct on his departure from the Paddocks was an instance
of this not uncommon peculiarity. After his interview with Honor, he was
in no mood--poor fellow--for the commonplace and the tiresome. He was
very sorry, he said to Honor, he hoped that she would make his excuses
to Mrs. Beacham, but he was late, and dinner was waiting probably (a fib
on Arthur’s part) at the Castle. So, after one long, lingering look,
under which the young wife’s colour rose tumultuously, and a silent
pressure of her hand, he left her to the companionship of her own not
very lively thoughts.

The message left by Mr. Vavasour was duly, and indeed with some slight
amplification, conveyed by Honor to its destination. Her natural tact
had led her to add some of the conventional phrases--a few of the
_banal_ expressions of regret which come so “handy” to the use of the
kind-hearted and the courteous; but on the matter-of-fact organisation
of the “old lady” these little civil emanations from pretty Honor’s
brain were completely thrown away, for she was thoroughly “put about” by
the departure, without the ceremony of leave-taking, of her young
landlord, and nothing that Honor could either say or do possessed, for
that day at least, the power of smoothing her ruffled plumage. Had
Arthur Vavasour been gifted with the power of taking serious thought of
the future, he would have reflected longer before he made an enemy of
that pretentiously hospitable old woman. He little dreamt that the
seeds of distrust and suspicion were that day sown, by his own act of
omission, in Mrs. Beacham’s breast; so true is it that our most trivial
acts, our _mignons_ and unnoticed sins, may one day rise up in judgment
against us, and be unto us a means of well-merited punishment.

That night Honor retired to her own chamber with a very strong sense of
ill-usage. She had returned from her walk out of spirits and subdued,
but nevertheless she had done her best to be cheerful, had sung her
prettiest ballads, and smiled her brightest smiles--but all in vain;
Mrs. Beacham had been cross, and her husband, tired with his day’s work,
had passed the evening in sound and uninterrupted slumber. Poor little
Honor! Sitting there before the looking-glass, her rich brown hair
rippling over her shoulders, she could hardly refrain from asking
herself whether nature had made her so very beautiful, for _this_. She
was beginning to think that, as Arthur Vavasour had once expressed it,
she was rather “wasted upon John.” There were _others_ perhaps (I am
afraid that Honor was beginning to forget how much she owed to her
generous-hearted husband) who might have been better able to appreciate
her. There was one--O child, child! dwell not for your life--for your
soul’s life’s sake--on that _first thought_ that leads towards the broad
road of sin! It may seem a very trifling and unimportant thing
that--contrasting in your mind the flattering devotion of a polished
gentleman with the unstudied, homely ways of him who, come what come
may, is, and must be, your yoke-fellow--that worthy, tired John, who
slumbers while you sing, and who seems so utterly to ignore the fact
that you are young and fair, has, you may imagine, given you a right by
his lumpish somnolence, his unflattering _insouciance_, to consider
yourself aggrieved; but, believe me, there is danger in such
self-pityings as these. Remember that _le mieux_ is never half so
redoubtable an enemy to _le bien_ as when the would-be lover is brought
into juxtaposition with the husband, who, secure of his once-coveted
possession, either neglects or seems incapable of valuing the better
part of the treasure he has won. Honor, in the dearth of mental
companionship, turned as instinctively as the flower to the sun to the
“mind” capable (it is the old story) of understanding her. She was
motherless, poor girl!--the child of no tender prayers, no eager,
anxious hopes. Should she pass safely through her trial it will be well
with her; but if she fall, God help her! for the world will not judge
her less harshly because of the “extenuating circumstances” which may,
let us humbly hope, recommend her to mercy in the day of doom.




CHAPTER XVIII.

NATURE ABHORS A VACUUM.


After the departure from the neighbourhood of Arthur Vavasour, there
seemed at first to be a great gap in Honor’s life. He had told her that
he was going to remain a fortnight or more in London previous to his
marriage, which was to take place there in great form and state on the
last day of August. Arthur had no intention, as he assured Mrs. Beacham,
of being present at the Danescourt festivities. His mother--that was his
avowed reason--did not view those festivities, in so far as they
regarded _him_, with a favourable eye; and it was “better taste” (so
Arthur assured his intimate acquaintances, his brother and his sisters
included) to keep away, during Lady Guernsey’s well-intended
hospitalities, from his home at Gillingham. His real motive for
absenting himself was, however, a widely different one. He was well
aware that not only would his intended bride be present, to expect, and
with good right and reason, that he should devote himself to her
service, but also that the woman whom it was his fate to love (men are
very apt to account for the indulgence of their evil propensities in
some such irrational manner) with a passion hitherto by him undreamt of
would be a guest though a humble one, within the walls of Danescourt
Park; and those glorious eyes of hers--Honor’s eyes were haunting ones,
and followed or rather _led_ Arthur to what he was pleased to call his
“doom,” when he was far away--would look their wonder if he kept aloof;
an evidence of self-controlling powers, by the way, which Mr. Vavasour,
to do him justice, greatly doubted his own ability on that occasion to
display.

The fêtes--it was now past the middle of July--were to commence in three
days’ time, and the certainty that her friend would take no part in them
had thrown a little damp on Honor’s highly-wrought expectations. The
pretty new dress, another of John’s expensive _cadeaux_, was not to her
the “thing of beauty” that it had been when she had wondered to herself,
in all innocence (Honor’s thoughts and mind were pure as yet as unsunned
snow), whether Mr. Vavasour would think her well-dressed--dressed “like
a lady,” in short, which was Honor’s _ne plus ultra_ of ambition. It
would be a pretty sight--she could look forward to that; and it was
very good of John to give up a whole afternoon--two even, he said, if it
would please her and his mother (ah, Honor, how silly it was to half
resent this sharing of your husband’s attentions!)--to see the
“tomfooleries” at Danescourt. But although Mrs. John Beacham would of
course make her appearance on the croquet and the archery ground, yet
the zest, the charm of the day’s amusement, seemed, in some to her
incomprehensible way, to have momentarily departed, if not to be utterly
extinct. But it was when on horseback, and during the long rides, longer
than ever now, which she took during those sweet summer afternoons, that
Honor the most missed and regretted her companion. She had no “young
friends,” no intimate associates of her own rank and degree, with whom
to exchange the nothings or the _somethings_, as the case may be, which
are of interest to juvenile matrons, whose housekeeping is in its
infancy, and whose husbands are rich enough to make the _ménage_,
trouble a source of pleasure and of pride. Honor stood, for her
misfortune, very much alone at the Paddocks. There was something, as I
once before explained, anomalous in her husband’s position--a something
which, even had his wife _not_ been what the neighbours called a little
inclined to be “set up,” would have prevented her being “hand-and-glove”
with such personages as the widows Thwaytes and Tamfrey, or even with
Miss Parsons, who sold caps and bonnets at a “high figure” at Leigh, and
dignified her shop-girls with the title of young ladies. It was
unfortunate, I repeat, that young Mrs. Beacham, for the reasons
aforesaid, found herself companionless in the home which John had hoped
to make so pleasant for her; and it was doubly unfortunate in that, by
eschewing as intimates those with whom her husband’s mother did not
consider herself too good (forsooth!) to consort, Honor contrived
without much difficulty to provide herself with more than one very
efficacious enemy.

It chanced that in the afternoon succeeding Mr. Vavasour’s farewell
visit, the widow Thwaytes, who had for many years occupied the post of
humble friend to the greater lady at the Paddocks, had come panting
along the lanes (for the day was warm, and the fair pedestrian inclined
to “stoutness”) to take a neighbourly cup of tea with her more
aristocratic crony. As the reader may possibly remember, albeit he has
to glance mentally as far back as the first chapter of this story, the
widow Thwaytes, being withal a good-natured woman enough, was by no
means ill-disposed towards the sweet-spoken beauty of whom the Clays,
and, indeed, all who knew her, “_thought_ so much.” Very willingly, and
often feeling that the jealous-tempered old lady was decidedly in the
wrong, would Mrs. Thwaytes have spoken her mind to her old chum and
neighbour on the subject of Honor’s merits. It angered her at the first
to hear Mrs. Beacham’s querulous and uncalled-for innuendoes against her
daughter-in-law; but the time soon came--after it grew to be
unmistakably evident that “Mrs. John meant to keep herself to
herself”--when the widow went over, heart and soul, to the enemy. Her
ready sympathy, which procured her many an excellent “dish” of her
favourite beverage, was well appreciated by the mistress of Updown
Paddocks; “mistress,” as her guest persisted in calling her, in spite of
Mrs. Beacham’s plaintive assurance that she had nothing now to do with
the management of John’s household, and that if things went wrong she
was not answerable for them. _Her_ day was over; but the time would
come, perhaps, when some people--she named no names--would find that new
brooms, though they swept ever so clean, were not so good as old ones,
and that pretty faces couldn’t make up for fanciful ways and idle
habits. Mrs. Thwaytes would listen by the hour encouragingly to these
outpourings of a wounded spirit, and though very far, as I before
hinted, from an ill-natured woman, she would occasionally throw in a
drop of balm in the shape of an admittance that Mrs. John was but young,
that she would improve in time, and last (not least in novelty and
conclusiveness), that it was a moral as well as a physical impossibility
to place an old head on the shoulders of the young.

It was with some such conversation as this that the two old gossips
(John was never in the house at that hour, and Honor was getting ready
for her ride) were beguiling the time on that warm July afternoon. The
window of the “parlour” was wide open (it was not the _best_ apartment;
_that_ was kept sacred to visitors of a more aristocratic stamp than the
widow Thwaytes), and from it there was a view of the ancient paved
court, or stable-yard, where the Morello cherry trees grew against the
north wall, where Honor fed her pigeons in the morning, and where stood
the lichen-covered old horse-block which Honor, in default of Arthur
Vavasour’s assistance, was fain to climb, in order (it was rather an
ignoble proceeding) to mount as best she could that graceful, high-born
animal, the Lady Meg.

“A little nearer, please, Jem, I can’t quite reach the stirrup;” and
Honor, standing on the top of the block, which had, in the days of
John’s father and grandfather, done good service in its line, with her
long habit just raised enough to show her dainty foot, and with her fair
girlish face slightly flushed, both with amusement and vexation, tried
by coaxings and caresses to draw the mare within her reach.

“She’s frightened, that’s what it is, Jem,” she said. “So! Meg!” and
again she stroked the mare’s arched neck with the tips of her gauntleted
fingers. Near enough, however, to be mounted Lady Meg would by no means
consent to be led, and Jem scratched his head at last in perplexity.

“It’s a pity the young Squire beant here,” he said; whereupon Honor
flushed crimson, and Mrs. Thwaytes, who overheard the words, laughed
significantly.

“Lead her on once more, and then try again,” Honor said, feeling
desperate with those two pairs of aged eyes fixed curiously upon her.
Jem did as he was ordered, and the experiment proving successful, Honor
mounted her steed, and with an unconcern that was less real than
affected, rode slowly away.

“Humph! I’m glad that Milady has had to help herself at last,” Mrs.
Beacham remarked. “No fine gentleman from the Castle to put his hand,
with the beautifullest of gloves on, under her foot to-day! What was
good enough for John’s grandfather she’ll have to find good enough for
her. I’ve no patience, _I_ haven’t, with such stuck-up ways.”

Mrs. Thwaytes listened and sighed. The subject on which her ally had
touched was not one that could be pursued without due thought and
deliberation. As yet, though well aware that a mean maternal jealousy
had begot something very like hatred to Honor in Mrs. Beacham’s breast,
the widow did not feel by any means thoroughly assured that she could
safely touch upon the _impropriety_ of Mr. Vavasour’s intimacy with
John’s young wife. The old lady had not, in that quiet busy home of
hers, marched even ever so laggingly with the times. In a groove, her
mind was that of the right woman in the right place. She had never, in
the course of a long life, striven to throw off a prejudice, or
struggled to free herself from the trammels of a preconceived and
stolidly retained idea. To the simple (may I be pardoned for calling it
the _pure_?) mind of the farmer’s widow crime _was_ crime, and had never
been softened by a _petit nom_. On the second of those two tables of
stone, at which, for nearly forty years, she had looked reverently from
her pew, there were certain Commandments which she (in common with many
of the young, who say their Catechism, and are taught to fear God)
believed, as regarded herself and her belongings, to be futile and
useless ordinances. “Thou shalt not steal;” “Thou shalt do no murder;”
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.” It was right, of course, that the
injunctions should be there; but what had she or hers, or, indeed, any
respectable members of the community, to do with wickedness so horrible?
Mrs. Beacham was neither a newspaper reader, a novel lover, nor a
dissecter of human character and motives. Of the degrees of crime, of
relative amount of guilt (temptation and temperament being taken into
account), she was as ignorant as poor Joe Griggs, the village idiot; and
this being so, her companion having withal sufficient shrewdness to
comprehend the same, that worthy gossipmonger hesitated slightly, and
took time to choose her words, before she startled Mrs. Beacham with the
news of what the Switcham folks might, could, or did say about John’s
pretty wife. She had laughed significantly--for a woman who could not be
called ill-natured, it was not a pleasant laugh--as Honor rode away.
That young lady had been more than usually “’aughty, the saucy thing!”
Mrs. Thwaytes had told herself that afternoon, and she did not feel at
all inclined to spare her any of the consequences of her misdeeds.

“She’s a pretty creature, is Mrs. John,” she said, with a commiserating
sigh, as the two congenial spirits resumed their places (they had been,
as I said, watching Honor “mount” from the window) at the tea-table; “a
sweet pretty creature, and so I always said. It’s a pity she’s so
thoughtless, though it’s the way, as one may say, with young folks. We
should remember that we was young once ourselves, and not be hard upon
them as is like the little bears with all their troubles afore them.”

“I don’t know what you mean by troubles,” said Mrs. Beacham, stirring
her tea with a great accession of energy. “John’s wife isn’t likely to
have much of _them_, I fancy. The work’us isn’t built, no, nor yet the
alms’us, that’s to hold her, I’m thinking. We can pay our way, and can
put a pound or two on one side at the end of the twelvemonth; and for
that,” she added solemnly, “I’m thankful to the Lord this day.”

The widow, feeling slightly rebuffed by her friend’s serious tone of
remonstrance, was silenced for a while; the occasion was, however, too
tempting to be lost, so she continued with greater caution the difficult
task of opening her companion’s eyes to the truth.

“Well, well, mem,” she said soothingly, “to think that you should fancy
I had need to be told that! There’s more troubles, though, as we all
well knows, than those which comes from poverty, and it was of them I
thought it my dooty to speak. I beg pardon if I’ve offended,” dusting
the crumbs from her company silk dress as she spoke. “It’s a painful
thing is dooty, and what’s got through at all times with a heffort,
which, as the Bible says, is its own reward.”

“I know what the Bible says as well as you do,” retorted Mrs. Beacham
loftily, “which I read it times and often when other folks that shall be
nameless is in their beds; and if you come to dooty, Jane Thwaytes, let
me tell you that--”

“Lor’ bless me!” put in the general dealer in a fright, “you’re taking
me altogether wrong, mem; it was t-totally of someone else I was
a-speaking, and, indeed, a-thinking of. There’s many a night, if you’ll
believe _me_, that I’ve laid awake a-wishing, and a-wondering how I was
to go through with this unpleasantness. People _will_ talk, we know, and
injynes won’t stop ’em; but if you was just, maybe, to say a word or two
to Mrs. John--” She paused, for something in the hard but still mobile
face of her companion revealed that the insidious droppings had taken
effect upon the stone, and that the worst part of her evil work, namely,
the beginning, had been accomplished. Mrs. Beacham, however, was not the
kind of woman to allow (if she knew it) of any, even the most
homœopathic triumph, over her either by friend or foe. To whatsoever
extent she might dislike her daughter-in-law, and though it is to be
feared that she would have welcomed any occasion of either humbling or
annoying her son’s petted wife, the proud old woman would have shrunk
sensitively from any open scandal, and would have stoutly denied any
assertion calculated to bring discredit on the honour of her son. The
idea of Honor being spoken of in the manner hinted by the widow
Thwaytes, was positively hateful to her, and she parried the affront in
her haughtiest and grandest manner.

“I don’t understand your meaning, Jane Thwaytes,” she said, “and I don’t
want to. Talk, indeed! I’d soon talk them if they gave _me_ any of the
nonsense going on in the village about _this_ house. Talk, indeed! The
idea of people _talking_!” and the irate old woman sniffed and snorted
vigorously at the bare idea of a climax so preposterous.

Mrs. Thwaytes was terribly distressed. She would not, as she solemnly
declared, have had Mrs. Beacham “put out” for the world. It had given
_her_ trouble enough, goodness knew, to stop people’s evil tongues. It
wasn’t Mrs. John’s fault--that she always _had_ said--that gentlemen
_would_ look after her. Mr. Vavasour had made a little free, perhaps,
but it didn’t follow that Mrs. John had anything to say to him; anyway,
he was to be married in a fortnight, people said and, as far as Switcham
was concerned, it was, as everyone must allow, “a good job too.”

A good job, in sooth; but the boon would have been a still more precious
one to all concerned if the officious widow had been gagged before she
could administer that “_harmless_ hint,” and present that _innocuous_
nut to her grand friend to crack. Mrs. Beacham was not one who received
ideas with exactly wax-like ease, but once a novel thought took root
within her, it would have been as hard to efface it from its granite bed
as to destroy letters graven “with a pen of iron on the surface of a
rock.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“Well, Honey,” said John Beacham, when he met his wife an hour or two
afterwards at the doorway of the parlour; he a trifle tired with his
hard day’s work, and quite ready for the meal he called his supper,
while Honor, her long habit gathered up over her arm, was looking all
the fresher and prettier for the exercise she loved, “well, Honey, and
how did Lady Meg carry you to-day? Rode her pretty fast, eh? Took her a
breather, I suspect, on the downs. I must be looking out for one with
more bone for you soon. Women are the deuce and all to ride a horse
hard,” he added, with a laugh, as he helped himself to a foaming glass
of home-brewed ale.

Mrs. Beacham, who had struck Honor as looking more than usually crabbed,
here put in her word.

“If Honor doesn’t know how to ride, I think she had better give it up,”
she said. “I wonder, John, you should like to have your horses ruined
with her working them to death.”

John was immensely amused at his mother’s remark. It was such an
excellent joke, her taking him in earnest. The idea of his kind-hearted,
gentle Honor--his wife, who petted and spoilt every living thing that
came in her way--being seriously believed capable of riding a great
strong horse to death, was to him irresistibly comic.

“Well, that is a good un!” he said, as soon as he had recovered from the
excess of merriment in which Honor’s natural sense of the ludicrous, and
the contagion of John’s irresistible laugh, had induced her to join.
“That _is_ a good un, by Jove! Why, mother, you must think that Honor is
a ‘great jockey,’ as the Paddies say; but I can tell you that she’s far
and away too good a rider to damage a horse. I never knew man or woman
to have a better nor a lighter hand on a horse’s mouth. You should hear
Mr. Vavasour talk of your seat, Honor! And he’s a pretty good judge of
such things. Arthur Vavasour is his father all over about horses, and
what belongs to ’em. I’m sorry he’s gone; and more sorry, too, that he’s
changed his mind about Rough Diamond. He’s a sure card is that animal,
and I would a deal rather that Arthur had him than that Colonel Fred
Norcott, that he says he’s sold him to.”

Mrs. Beacham had fixed her eye steadily on Honor’s countenance from the
moment that Arthur Vavasour’s name was mentioned; and when her son had
finished speaking, she said in a cold, inquiring manner that could
scarcely fail to convey the impression that more was meant than met the
ear:

“Well, if you haven’t tired out the horse, you’ve made your own face red
enough, in all conscience. I say, John, did you ever see such a colour
as Honor’s got all of a sudden?”

John Beacham looked at his wife admiringly, and the flush, as he did so,
deepened on her face.

“I don’t see much difference,” he said with a laugh. “Honor’s always
like the pretty rose that has grown ever since I can remember next the
big lavender-bush in the kitchen-garden--they call it the ‘maiden
blush,’ I think; not but what you’re something redder now, Pet? It’s
the being looked at, I suppose. Why, who knows? I might begin blushing
myself, if anybody took the trouble to notice my looks. But they don’t;
the more’s the pity--ain’t it, Honey?” and getting up from the table,
for his evening meal was over by this time, he laughingly patted his
wife’s glowing cheek, and then kissed it fondly--so fondly, that Mrs.
Beacham, looking on with jaundiced eyes, and with the evil demon of
maternal jealousy let loose within her, could hardly succeed in keeping
that precious thing, her temper.

“I wonder what’s come over the old lady,” John said, when he found
himself that evening alone with his wife, and could indulge in a few
minutes’ confidential discourse before sleep--the deep, healthy sleep of
the weary--overtook him. “She isn’t half the woman she was. She’s grown
peevish, to my thinking, and nagging--a thing she never was given to
before. Perhaps it’s her health,” he added meditatively. “She’s a strong
woman for her time of life; but she’s getting on, and I fancy she’s
altered--don’t you think so, Pet? Grown wrinkled-like, and haggard, eh?”

Honor could not perceive any outward change, she said; and in the matter
of temper, the subject being a delicate one to discuss with her husband,
she deemed it wisest to hold her peace. To her great relief,
unsuspecting John was too sleepy to pursue the subject, and in a few
minutes his deep regular breathing was the only sound that broke the
stillness of that large old-fashioned bedchamber.

Honor was what is called a light sleeper, and the early birds had begun
to twitter in the branches before her eyes were closed in slumber. She
was but eighteen however, and therefore sleep, when it did steal over
her senses, was dreamless and refreshing. Under twenty-five, all our
material acts, when they are done at all, are done so thoroughly!




CHAPTER XIX.

ARTHUR RECEIVES ABSOLUTION.


Arthur Vavasour had, as the reader has already learned, found little
difficulty in persuading the kind-hearted, unsuspicious man whose
colossal fortune had been made in the manufacturing districts, and who
entertained exalted ideas (very convenient ones on this occasion) of the
honour of a high-born English gentleman, that he, Arthur Vavasour, was
entirely free from spot or blemish, or any such thing as regarded his
future son-in-law’s intimate acquaintance with John Beacham and his two
yearlings.

Old Dub, as he was familiarly called, inhabited, during his annual
sojourn in the country, a magnificent “mansion” on the western borders
of Sandyshire. It was an abode that had once belonged to a Duke, and
princely hospitality had been, during the residence of the aforesaid
nobleman, for a lengthened period dispensed within the noble walls of
Fairleigh Manor. His Grace, however, coming--according to
nineteenth-century slang--“to grief,” the place was degraded to the
hammer, being purchased by the solvent Mr. Duberly for a sum that would
have liquidated any debts save those of a Duke or a crowned head, but
which was barely sufficient to satisfy the more clamorous creditors of
the quondam owner of Fairleigh.

The immediate change for good effected in the neighbourhood through the
abiding therein of a wealthy proprietor, who paid his bills and “lived
cleanly as a gentleman should,” was very speedily evident. It might be
supposed, too, that the satisfaction at that change would have been
great and general. This, however, was far from being the case. There is
a certain magic in the very name of _Duke_, and the “neighbourhood,”
clinging, in a kind of stupid, unreasoning way to old associations, old
habits, and traditions, took exception at old Dub; and for a long while
either treated him as a usurper, or consented, as it were under protest,
to admit him among their intimates. This was the more extraordinary,
inasmuch as the new-comer showed very little inclination to hide his
talents, _id est_ his pieces of gold, in a napkin. On the contrary, he
not only kept open house, and was ten times as genial as the “Dook,” but
he owned (as we have shown) a very nice-looking daughter, who was
withal (for Mr. Duberly was a widower) the heiress to his wealth;
whereas the “Duchess” girls were plain young women with high noses,
whose only fortune was the pedigree on which their parent had brought as
much discredit as it is possible for a duke to entail upon his
belongings.

But notwithstanding all his manifest advantages, “old Dub,” the
merchant-prince, who paid his way, employed the people, and was a
blessing to his neighbourhood, found it up-hill work to conciliate the
goodwill of individuals whose social tastes had been refined--ripened,
indeed, so to speak--under the sunshine of ducal notice, and who had
enjoyed the privilege of ducal proximity. By slow degrees, however, the
thorough excellence of the man told against the spurious advantages of
position; the memory of the princely banquets few and far between as
compared to those offered to their acceptance by the new owner of
Fairleigh, faded away from the minds of the invited. “Dub’s” wines were
excellent, and his daughter’s face (to say nothing of her being an
heiress) was fair to see; so in process of time, the descendant of the
Manchester warehouseman took his place--no longer under protest--amongst
the magnates of the land; and the dark-eyed, lively Sophy was sought for
in marriage by the great ones of the earth.

“Say no more about it, my dear boy; say--no--more,” the kind-hearted old
man had said to Arthur when the latter, for the first time after Horace
Vavasour’s vicarious explanation, found himself in the library at
Fairleigh; “say--no--more;” and, as he spoke, pausing between each word
as if to emphasise their meaning, he pressed his wrinkled hand on the
young man’s shoulder. “I’m almost sorry I wrote to Milady at all. I
suppose,” rather wickedly, “that it made the deuce and all of a kick-up,
eh? As for Sophy, I can tell you, I’ve had a pretty time with her! I
wish you joy of that young lady, Arthur!” and he laughed heartily, the
good old man, at the excellence and originality of his joke. “And so
you’re off to the Pembertons? old family friends, you say--All right;
just as well to keep those sort of people up, I daresay, though I can’t
say I have many of the kind to trouble _me_. No young ladies there
though, eh, to worry Sophy? You young London fellows are not always to
be trusted,” and again he laughed--a genial hearty laugh that did one
good to hear.

“No, indeed,” Arthur said, joining, though rather feebly, in the
merriment. “All that sort of thing is over for me now. I shouldn’t care
to go to Sir Richard’s, only it is an old engagement; and if I don’t go
now--”

“You won’t be allowed to later, you rogue! Is that what you mean--a
previous engagement to Miss Sophy, eh? Well, well, my dear boy, do as
you like about it all--or rather, I should say, what Sophy likes. And
now be off with you. You’ve given more time already than she’ll think
right to the old fellow, and you’ll find her in the conservatory, I
fancy, or, if not, in her own flower-garden. By George!” continued the
old man, rubbing his forehead with a recollection half comic and half
sorrowful of a certain interview with his daughter, whose tears he was
never known to be proof against, and who had shown herself a true woman
on the occasion of her lover’s temporary eclipse,--“by George! what a
way she was in, to be sure! I could hardly fancy it was my little Sophy,
the slip of a girl that I was dancing on my knee no longer ago than
yesterday, as it seems! And now she’s a woman, and able to take her own
part; ay, and _your_ part too, my lad. God bless her! I could have told
her then, only I didn’t like to, she was so rampageous, and it doesn’t
do to spoil the creatures, that I was more than half sorry I’d called
you over the coals. But on the whole, Arthur, it’s just as well as it
is; and between ourselves, my boy, although I don’t know that my brother
the parson, who is going to splice you and Sophy, wouldn’t call me an
old fool for saying it, I’m not sure that I don’t like you the better
for what’s past and gone. You might, you know--and I’m told that many a
young man would have done such a thing--you might have kept it to
yourself that you’d given that long sum for one of John Beacham’s
yearlings; for it was a long sum, eight hundred pounds, I think your
brother said it was; and terribly like gambling, you must own, it
looked! However, that is all over now, and you are well out of it. I am
sure you think so too, eh?”

Arthur hesitated a little ere he answered this leading question. For
some reason, which it is not necessary at this stage of the story to
explain, he was not particularly partial to talking of that famous colt,
known in the betting-ring, and in sporting circles generally, as Rough
Diamond. It is just possible that he was not quite so glad to be what
Mr. Duberly called “out of it” as that gentleman seemed to think; still,
he contrived to answer cheerfully enough that “it was all right,” and
that he hoped that Norcott would have good luck with the brute now he
had got him.

“Ha, ha!” laughed the cheerful old man. “So Roughrider, or whatever his
name is, has come to be called a brute, eh? The way of the world, sir;
the way of the world! Whatsoever is our own is perfection; but directly
it becomes our friend’s--poof!”--and he snapped his fingers
significantly--“it isn’t worth a brass farthing! Seen the sort of thing,
by George! a hundred times. But I say, Arthur,” lowering his voice to a
whisper, “about this Colonel Norcott; what and who is he? I’ve a sort of
idea that I know something about him. Didn’t he go to the colonies, or
the dogs, or some confounded place? I’m a bad hand at remembering that
kind of thing; couldn’t even when I was a young man; and now I might as
well try and recollect who built the Monument.”

Again, as at the mention of Colonel Norcott in connection with that
unlucky steed Rough Diamond, Arthur looked ill at ease. He answered
readily enough, however, to the effect that he believed Colonel Norcott
had formerly been in the Irish Greys, but that it was long before _his_
time, and that he (Arthur) knew very little in any way about the
purchaser of John Beacham’s colt.

“In the Irish Greys, was he?” Mr. Duberly said thoughtfully. “Ah, that
reminds me! How little it takes sometimes to do that kind of thing!
Colonel Norcott was the man--correct me if I’m wrong--who had something
to do with an advertisement. Answered one from a respectable young
woman, eh? and--ah yes! It all comes home to me now. A bad business--a
shocking bad business indeed!”

Arthur reflected a little, and then said that he was afraid, from some
things he had heard, that Colonel Norcott was the identical man existing
for life under the kind of cloud alluded to by Mr. Duberly. “I don’t
think that I ever heard the particulars,” he said. “I fancy his wife
left him, or was an objectionable person, or something extenuating of
that kind. She is dead now, fortunately for him, and he has married
again, I fancy--some colonial person, whom they say is rather nice.”

“The triumph of hope over experience, eh?” remarked Mr. Duberly, who was
rather fond of extracting from the limited stores of his memory sundry
quotations, ancient as they were classic. “But what has the man been
doing down here? Is he in society, or is he not? He is a fine-looking
fellow enough for a middle-aged man. I saw him one day driving what you
call a ‘trap’ in the High-street at Leigh, and asked who he was. What is
his connection, I wonder--for I suppose he has one--with Sandyshire?”

“O, as to that, there is reason enough for his hanging about here,” said
Arthur, glad, as it seemed, to offer a legitimate guarantee for Colonel
Norcott’s quasi-respectability. “The Norcotts are, or I should rather
say _were_, a county family. Fred Norcott’s father was a rich man, and
his mother, who is nearly related to the Pembertons, has a comfortable
jointure, luckily for her, as her son (there was only him) managed to
get rid of everything else very early in his career, I fancy.”

“And lives now upon his wits, I suppose?”

“Partly; and then I imagine his mother helps him a little; not much,
though, for she is married again to a Mr. Baker, who is not particularly
attached to Colonel Fred. The Bakers--he is a retired solicitor, or
something of that kind--live in a pretty little place about three miles
the other side of Leigh; and the fact of its lying convenient to the
Gawthorpe racecourse is quite sufficient to account for Fred Norcott
turning up occasionally in these parts. And now, sir, having told you
all I know and suspect about the family, I think I may as well go and
say good-bye to Sophy.”

Leaving the placidly happy old man comfortably ensconced, newspaper in
hand, in his favourite arm-chair by the wide open French window of the
library, Arthur Vavasour went in search of his betrothed. He knew as
well almost as if the interview were over what would take place between
him and that tender, unassuming, rather commonplace little girl (as I am
afraid he called her) who was waiting for him in the magnificent
conservatory, book in hand, but without a passing idea, poor child! save
of the man who gave her in return so little of his love, so small a
portion of his waking as well as sleeping thoughts. There was none--and
the want in _her_ case was a serious misfortune--of the “delightfully
capricious,” the “charmingly various,” the “tantalisingly mysterious,”
in the character of Sophy Duberly. Her nature, which was simple and
guileless as a child’s, could be read at a glance in the soft brown
eyes, honest, tender, and trusting--eyes which are rarely to be seen in
a human countenance, but which those who are addicted to canine
friendships can recollect in the head of more than one faithful beast
which has lain at his feet, and been unto him as a brother. Coquetry,
that useful woman’s weapon, was an utterly unknown “arm” to this
simple-hearted heiress. The most practised teacher in the female art of
self-defence would have failed to make Sophy understand the handling of
that perilous instrument. Her “yea” was “yea,” and her “nay” “nay,” and
somewhat “yea,” “nay,” it is to be feared that her variety-loving
_intended_ sometimes found her.

In person, this humble heiress to countless thousands was quite
sufficiently attractive to have been loved--as all women in her position
naturally desire to be--for herself alone. Her features were not
regular, nor can her eyes be described as either large or “liquid;” but
her figure was fine, her complexion good, her teeth white, and her _tout
ensemble_ decidedly effective. She worshipped Arthur Vavasour with a
devotion which was alike unmerited and inexpedient. At Rome,--where he
first became acquainted with the millionaire English _mees_, at whose
feet penniless princes with titles dating from the days of the Tribunes
laid their pedigrees humbly down, and where the money of the Manchester
warehouseman proved the “open sesame” to the highest and the most
exclusive society,--Arthur Vavasour had taken a high place amongst the
many aspirants for Miss Duberly’s favourable notice. He was his mother’s
son, and that mother, at present in possession of an income of some
thirty thousand pounds per annum, must, in a very few years (for the
particulars of the Earl of Gillingham’s will were in the world very
generally known), abdicate--or rather, be very unpleasantly deposed in
favour of her eldest son. With such prospects as these, it was
impossible to attribute mercenary motives to that handsome, agreeable
_pretendant_; and that Mr. Vavasour could be thinking of marrying for
money was an idea that never once presented itself, either to Mr.
Duberly or his daughter. It was pleasant to believe that the attentions
of one in Mr. Vavasour’s position must of necessity be so purely (as was
patent to the world) disinterested. To Sophy, who had been duly warned
against the mercenary nature of all human motives, the conviction that
Arthur was an exception to the general rule was especially delightful.
After all that she had heard, and read, and seen--after the raids by
impecunious aristocrats into the regions where the richer ten thousand
guarded their well-earned gold, of which she had more than once been
herself the destined victim--what wonder that this middle-class young
lady, who was not (what girl of any promise is?) without her small
ambitions, should have seen in Arthur Vavasour the realisation of all
her fondest dreams, her highest aspirations?

She made no secret of her preference. An indulged and petted only child,
Sophia Duberly had never known the necessity, scarcely even the
advisableness, of sometimes keeping her feelings to herself; and so it
followed that Arthur knew full well, long before the avowal had been
made in words, that the rich heiress loved him.

It was well for him that Miss Duberly could not guess how very slight
was the effect that the discovery produced upon him. Well, too, for him
that the girl to whom he was about to plight his troth knew, in common
with all the world, so very little of the actual state of affairs at
Gillingham Castle. They were a proud race, those Vavasours; their
pride--Arthur’s, at least, taking the turn of resenting in silence his
mother’s meanness, love of power--call it what you will--which led her
to keep him, the heir-apparent, so “short,” that he was _driven_ (that
was the young man’s way of putting it) to run in debt, and eventually to
marry for money; results which were of course intensely odious and
“disgusting.”

The heir of Gillingham was descending in a very compromising manner from
his pedestal in thus mixing his blue blood, and being brought down to
the dull dignity of a “family-man,” by an enforced union with the
Manchester man’s daughter. Arthur had, however, no resource but to
submit. In silence (with the single exception of his almost unbounded
confidence in his brother Horace) this self-indulgent, self-pitying
young English gentleman bore his cross, inwardly chafing the while
against the “shifts” to which he was reduced, and the self-denial that
he was sometimes called upon to practise.

It was not till Arthur was firmly established in the good graces of the
merchant-prince--not till he was, in short, one of themselves--that he
ventured to open the eyes of Mr. Duberly to the peculiarities of Lady
Millicent’s character, and the unjust as well as unmotherly conduct of
which he was himself a victim. As he had fully expected would be the
case, this confession had no power to shake his hold on the good opinion
of the unsuspecting Duberly. As a matter of course, Lady Millicent
(whose pride and “stand-aloof” ways had already caused her to be no
favourite with the plain-spoken, independent millionaire) came in for
her full share of invective, and of a contemptuous ridicule of which,
had she known of its existence, she would have strongly disapproved; but
it is more than probable that “old Dub” liked his future son-in-law even
better after this rather humiliating confession than he had done before.
The love of patronising and protecting is inherent in most human
breasts; and fortunate, indeed, is it that so it has been ordained to
be, for where very frequently, were it otherwise, would the feeble and
the friendless be? The love, then, of patronising being one of our
nature’s idiosyncrasies, and Mr. Duberly not being _un_naturally
constituted, that excellent man felt more than ever disposed to act a
father’s part towards the “good-looking young fellow” of whom his only
child, his dearly-beloved little Sophy, was so fond.

With regard to that simple-minded and rather benighted young lady, who
was entirely ignorant of the great moral truth that over-indulgence is
equally prejudicial to the grown-up among mankind as it is to children
of a smaller growth, she scarcely knew how to make enough, (after the
knowledge of what she considered his ill-usage,) of Arthur Vavasour. The
way that she petted and coaxed, and yielded to, and made much of this
not particularly humble-minded young gentleman, was, as the Yankees say,
a caution. It was very nice, of course, and sweet, and flattering, and
the object of all this worship ought, by rights, to have demonstrated
unbounded gratitude, and have shown himself to be more deeply and
ardently in love than ever; but for some reason or other--human nature
is so thoroughly inscrutable that we can by no means account for this
unsatisfactory result--Arthur’s affection for his unsuspecting and
devoted _fiancée_ began to decrease in an inverse ratio to that which
she so evidently entertained for him. Of this melancholy decadence he
was himself, for a while, happily unconscious; indeed, it required the
awakening within him of another love to arouse this _infidèle malgré
lui_ to a proper sense of his position.

The conviction that he is bound to marry one woman while his feelings,
passions--call them what you will--are wrapped up in another, can never
be agreeable to any man. Arthur Vavasour was no practised dissembler,
and it was fully as much as he found himself able to effect to prevent
Sophia Duberly, during a stay of four-and-twenty hours, from discovering
the truth--namely, that though he was with her in the body, his
thoughts--alas, for her!--were far away.




CHAPTER XX.

SOMETHING ABOUT “MILADY.”


On the 23d of July, in the year 186--, the day remarkable as that on
which Arthur Vavasour reached his twenty-first birthday, crowds of
people of every degree, and all, as it seemed, on pleasure bent, were
assembled in the park, and along the roads that led towards the
beautiful “seat” known as belonging to the Earl of Guernsey. It was a
pretty place--not “princely,” like Fairleigh, or frowning proudly in
baronial grandeur, after the fashion of noble and time-honoured
Gillingham; but, though inferior in magnificence to its more imposing
neighbours, Danescourt was, after all, a mansion and estate not wholly
unworthy the rank of its owners.

Lady Guernsey, who was country born and bred (albeit one of the most
popular women in England, and perfectly “at home” everywhere), was
greatly attached to Danescourt. She was never so happy--so said those
who knew her best, for Lady Guernsey was a person who talked very
little about herself--as when, the London season being over, she could
devote herself at “dear” Danescourt to her garden, her children, and her
poor.

The Lacys were a large family, there were seven of them--“the curate’s
half-dozen,” Lord Guernsey used often to say, with a cheery laugh, which
would have sounded pleasant from any lips, but was, of course, doubly
exhilarating from a lord’s. He was a capital person altogether, that
“belted earl,” whose girdle was capable of encircling the slender waists
of two modern guardsmen, and whose face beamed so pleasantly with
genuine good-nature, to say nothing of the good things of this life,
that the man must have been morose indeed, and ingrained with mental
jaundice, whose spirits were not lightened by the glow of his genial
companionship.

Between the Vavasour family and that of the Lacys, who were
comparatively new settlers in the county (_their_ coming dating as
lately as the Restoration), there had never existed any of those ties,
either of friendship or family connection, which near neighbourhood is
sometimes known to cement. Though, as it is only natural to conclude,
many brave sons and fair daughters must, in the course of centuries,
have sprung from the respective marriage-beds of those highly
distinguished families, no intermarriages had taken place between them.
The hereditary politics also of the two races were, and always had been,
diametrically opposed--one reason probably, among many, why no closer
bonds than the cold ones of acquaintanceship had hitherto linked
together the members of two of the most ancient, as well as most
respected “houses” in the county.

The Earl and Countess of Guernsey, who, as I before said, were genial,
warm-hearted people, would gladly (not for the sake of Lady Millicent,
whom they did not like, but for that of the young people at the Castle,
whom they did) have established warmer and cordial relations with their
neighbours at Gillingham Castle. They were unfeignedly sorry for the
poor girls, whose youth was blighted by Lady Millicent’s selfish
adherence to a system of seclusion--a system introduced and persevered
in, as Lord Guernsey, who was an outspoken man, did not hesitate to say,
far more from the promptings of a parsimonious spirit than from any deep
and lingering sorrow for “poor Cecil’s” death.

“Don’t tell me,” he would say, speaking almost bitterly for one so
habitually good-tempered,--“don’t tell me about Lady Mill’s being a
‘pattern widow.’ She is no more a pattern widow than she was, at any
time since I have known anything about her, a pattern wife or a pattern
mother. I never had any patience with all that flunkeyish humbug about
Lady Millicent’s perfections. Whatever good was done in that family--and
a great deal _was_ done, that we all know--is to be attributed solely to
Cecil Vavasour. As for Lady Mill--”

“Well, well,” put in Lady Guernsey good-humouredly, “I think there is
something to be said for her. That Will of her father’s must be terribly
trying to a person of her domineering temper.”

“So are a great many wills--all wills, in short, that are antagonistic
to our own. It doesn’t follow, though, that we are justified in trying
to set them on one side. In my opinion--but then I have never been
tried,” he added, laughing, “by a similar aggravation--in my opinion,
the will of a dead man, like his last injunctions, ought to be held
sacred. A curse is more likely than a blessing to follow on its being
set aside.”

“And they do say that Lady Millicent is going to try the case--against
her own son, too! It looks unnatural; but I still say, although I am
anything but fond of her, that there is some good in Lady Mill. She is
fond of her children, after a fashion; she is anxious about them when
they are ill, which isn’t often, for there never were more healthy
creatures; and I really think that but for this clause in the will--I
mean, if it had been left to her to manage that great fortune in her own
way--Lady Millicent would have given no cause for the world to say that
she is neither a good mother nor a faithful stewardess.”

“Perhaps not. You women know one another’s characters and motives best.
Lady Mill _may_ have _hidden_ excellences in her nature (very securely
hidden, too, I must say), which it requires a woman’s penetration to
discover. My experience of life tells me that if there be anything
estimable in a tremendously rich person like Milady Millicent, that same
estimable quality increases and magnifies itself a hundredfold in going
from mouth to mouth; while, on the contrary, the praiseworthiness of the
poor is a very unfructifying and unprofitable article indeed. For my
part (mind, I expect to be abused), now that the fashion is gone by of
glorifying my Lady Millicent--not that it would have gone by if poor
Cecil had lived--for my part, and I say it without fear of being
contradicted, what I think is (and I repeat it again), that all the talk
there used to be about her being faultless, and all that kind of thing,
was totally undeserved. Like thousands of other prosperous people, she
never did anything openly bad. She was not, I daresay, much given to
breaking the ten Commandments; but then, I should be glad to ask, where
were her temptations? Ladies are not much in the habit of swearing; she
had neither father nor mother to honour or dishonour; there was nothing
for her to covet; and, God knows, no man in his senses would covet her!”

“You are not very charitable to poor Lady Mill,” said the Countess,
laughing in spite of herself at this _résumé_ of their neighbour’s
“gifts.”

“Charitable? I should think not! Who with any Christian feeling would be
charitable to one who has gained for herself such a name for hardness of
heart, while she professes to respect God’s holy law and commandments,
as Lady Millicent Vavasour? I am not, I hope, either a humbug or a prig;
but I like to see people act up to what they profess, and I should have
a better opinion than I have of our neighbour at the Castle if she
talked about religion less, and acted up to its dictates more.”

“In my opinion,” said Lady Guernsey thoughtfully, “more than half of her
pretended love of seclusion and country life, which people have said so
much about, arises from selfishness and indolence!”

“Bravo!” said his lordship in delight. “I knew it would come! Let a
woman alone, if she’s a sensible one, for arriving at the right
conclusion. Now, I’ll tell you what it is, Gertrude,” he added more
seriously, and placing his wife’s hand within his arm, as they strolled
together under the branching chestnuts of the grand old avenue leading
to the house; “I’ll tell you exactly what it is. There _may_ be, as you
say, no real harm in Lady Millicent; but she is neither tender, nor
open, nor womanly. Gad, what should I do, and what would the children
do, with such a mother as that? As for the poor things at the Castle up
there, I declare it’s a shame to see her muddle away their existence as
she does. Those two fine young men--Arthur, particularly, who, between
you and me, is a little soft, and who required no end of judgment in his
raising--are utterly ruined.”

“I hope not, poor things,” said Lady Guernsey, who was given to look,
even more than was her lord, at the bright side of every shield, “I hope
not; one never can tell how boys will turn out. I’m often really quite
uneasy about Ernest; and yet--”

“You needn’t trouble yourself, my dear Gertrude, about him. Ernest is
one of your quiet, lymphatic sort, but both those young fellows at the
Castle are of another kind of constitution; and I’m as certain that
Arthur, at least, will come to grief, as I am glad that his poor father
didn’t live to see it.”

“I often thought that Mr. Vavasour wasn’t pursuing the wisest plan in
the world about his boys,” remarked Lady Guernsey pensively. “The
Vavasour children never seemed to be allowed to find their own pleasures
like other boys and girls. They were very good, I daresay, and were
always well-behaved; but I used often to fancy it would have been more
natural if they had been naughty sometimes like their neighbours.”

“Much more natural! And then the plan of sending Arthur to travel with
that kind of half-and-half gentleman tutor was very bad. For my part, I
don’t believe Lady Mill knows a gentleman when she sees him. All she
thinks of is Power, and all she dreads is the time when Arthur will be
twenty-five, and the hour for her despotism will have sounded. My own
idea is--and many people, I fancy, suspect the same--that she is making
up a purse against the evil day of dowagerhood. One thing, however, is
certain, namely, that all this--this unfortunate state of things at
Gillingham--is a sad business for the poor on the estate. Already the
appearance of the cottages, and, above all, the state of moral feeling
among the labourers on the Gillingham estate, has undergone a serious
change for the worse. The lower orders--I hate the name, but it says
what I want to express--were secure of Cecil Vavasour’s sympathy. Ay,
even of his friendship, while as for his widow--But enough of this; for
our own motes, my dear Gertrude, are, after all, not so completely
eradicated that we can afford to lay so much stress upon the beams that
we may happen to discover in our neighbour’s eyes.” He spoke only half
seriously, for Lord Guernsey was one of those who take a cheerful view
of all things and subjects; but the conversation just narrated was not
without its effect, inasmuch as his wife obtained in consequence free
leave and permission that on the occasion of Arthur’s twenty-first
birthday Danescourt should be as gay as a full bevy of summer guests
could make it. Nominally, the festive week at the Court had nothing to
do with Arthur’s coming of age. The good-natured host and hostess were
too desirous of giving pleasure to each and all of the young Vavasours,
for any hint of the truth to have designedly passed their lips. But for
all their caution, it did, of course, come to be noised abroad that the
Guernseys were teaching Lady Millicent her duty, and that for once in
their lives her young daughters were to be indulged in the opportunity
of enjoying themselves.




CHAPTER XXI.

MRS. BEACHAM GOES A PLEASURING.


“Well, mother, ain’t this better now than to be sitting mending
stockings, and to be bothering about pickles and preserves at home?”
asked genial John Beacham of his highly respectable parent as mother and
son, sitting in the front-seat of the most well-appointed of “traps,”
were jogging quietly along the pleasant lanes towards Danescourt.

It was somewhat against the grain, and not a little to his own
inconvenience, that John Beacham was devoting a day to amuse his
womankind on that eventful twenty-fourth of July. Danescourt was a good
five-and-twenty miles from the Paddocks. In little more than
half-an-hour the travellers could be conveyed by rail from Switcham to
Gawthorpe; the latter place being the nearest town and station--distant
about three miles--from Danescourt. But Mrs. Beacham unfortunately
entertained, amongst other immutable prejudices, a very decided one
against steam locomotion. As a rule she was not greatly troubled with
“nerves;” but the exception was when, by some extraordinary
concatenation of circumstances, she found herself whirled along in an
express-train, gasping for breath, and ejaculating piteous appeals for
protection to that Power which, under the ordinary circumstances of
everyday life, we are all of us so given both to ignore and to forget.
It was a standing joke (when that lady was not present) that old Mrs.
Beacham invariably began to say her prayers the moment the pace of the
train by which she was travelling commenced to accelerate. Indeed, so
patent and unmistakable were her sufferings, that John--well-to-do,
open-handed John--who, “thank goodness, was not obliged to look twice at
a shilling before he spent it,” and who was unwilling to turn a day’s
pleasure into one of penance, decided to drive his mother and his pretty
wife in the new “trap;” services of that famous horse “Jolly Boy,” an
animal who could “trot his nine mile an hour, sir, without turning a
hair,” being put into requisition on the occasion. As a matter of
course, her own personal dignity being concerned in the matter, Mrs.
Beacham had required some pressing before she allowed herself to be
persuaded to attend the gala scene at Danescourt. _She_ was not wanted,
the old lady declared, in such gay places as that. At _her_ age she was
better at home minding the house; while other people, who _were_ fond of
gadding about, took their pleasure in Lord Guernsey’s park. It was
rather provoking, Honor thought, to see her stepmother _poser en
victime_, when she, the younger woman, was perfectly well aware that had
Mrs. Beacham been sixteen instead of sixty-five, she could hardly have
looked forward with greater satisfaction than was in fact the case, to
that day’s long-promised “outing.” That _she_, Honor, did not press her
stepmother to do violence to her feelings by condescending to form one
of the little party to Danescourt was a fruitful source of aggravation;
and when the old lady _did_ eventually take her place in the front-seat
of the “trap,” attired in a wonderful new bonnet from Leigh, and a
Paisley shawl of many colours--her own choice, and worn for the first
time that day--her temper could not, with justice, be said to be above
its average standard of good humour and composure.

With a little sign of resignation Honor took her place on the back-seat,
where, for the next three hours, she was doomed to be imprisoned, her
limbs cramped by sundry bags and boxes--for they had decided to spend
the night at Gawthorpe--and her view circumscribed by John’s broad
shoulders, and by the gaudy shawl pinned with old-fashioned tightness
round his mother’s ample back. Though wanting yet two hours to noon, the
July sun was already darting its broiling rays over the travellers’
heads; and Mrs. Beacham’s solid cotton umbrella, hoisted for that
autocratic lady’s comfort, materially interfered with that of the slight
figure behind, which was clad in the simplest of airy muslins, while
there rested on the thick braids of her fair hair a dainty hat that was,
in Mrs. Beacham’s opinion, most reprehensibly juvenile and coquettish.

“Better, ain’t it, mother?” John said, as the well-bred brown horse
dragged the heavy weight behind him through the sand of a cross-country
lane. “The country is beautiful to-day. Hold up, Jolly Boy; and, Honor,
sit close, my dear. This road is rather in a go-to-the-bad state; and it
wouldn’t do to be pitched out in the dust in that pretty get-up of
yours.”

Honor laughed. She was a girl--child enough, also, you may say--to be
amused by the jolts that half shook her out of her seat, and so greatly
disturbed the old lady’s temper. In the excitement of the drive, the
changing of the scene, and the anticipation of the coming gaiety, she
had forgotten Mr. Vavasour altogether; and that gentleman would have
been but ill-pleased could he have guessed how small a share he had in
young Mrs. Beacham’s thoughts during the long drive that day.

“Well, thank goodness, here we are at last!” exclaimed the discomfited
old lady, when at length a sudden turn in the high-road brought them in
sight of a pretty ivy-covered lodge, which stood invitingly open, and
which John informed Honor was the principal entrance to the Danescourt
grounds. “Such a dusting as I’ve had to be sure! I declare to goodness
that my best silk won’t be worth five shillings when I get it home. A
silk, too, that cost me seven shillings a yard no longer ago than last
May twelvemonth, and was as good this morning as it was the day I bought
it.”

“Well, mother, we must buy you another, that’s all,” said John
good-humouredly. “But, I say! if there isn’t jolly Jack Winthrop, with
the old chestnut out, I see!--How are you, Jack? and how’s the
mare?”--pulling up Jolly Boy to have a few moments horsey talk with his
old acquaintance. “Sound again, eh? Steps a little short still, don’t
she, with the near foreleg?”

Jack Winthrop, who was a wiry-made sporting-looking character, in a
black cut-away and a low-crowned hat, was sitting behind a
wicked-looking “red” mare, the which animal was harnessed to a vehicle
called a dog-cart, but incapable of containing, with any degree of
comfort, any creature, four-footed or otherwise, in addition to the said
wiry Jack himself. He gave a knowing nod and wink to John, and threw an
admiring glance at Honor, as he passed, at the full swing of the wicked
chestnut, the more steady-going “family man.”

John shook his head gravely. “There he goes!” he said. “That’s just the
way with those fellows! Jack, now, has doctored up that mare of his; and
some poor devil of a muff will be stuck, I’ll answer for it, before the
day is out.”

It was scarcely, however, the place or the season for moralising. They
were by this time in the ruck of carriages and horsemen, all going in
one direction, and John Beacham’s attention was amply employed, not only
on the steering of Jolly Boy through the crowd, but in returning the
cordial greetings of his many friends and acquaintances. At length, and
after sundry exclamations of alarm, and more than one involuntary clutch
at the reins on the part of John’s agitated parent, the little party in
the “trap” came in sight, through an opening in the trees, of a great
white marquee, capable--if the voice of rumour could be believed--of
containing within its canvas walls a whole regiment of soldiers, the
said marquee having been erected in a broad and sheltered glen, at
about five hundred yards’ distance from the house. The scene that
presented itself to Honor’s admiring gaze was full of life and colour
and animation. The band of an infantry regiment, at that time stationed
at Leigh, was thundering forth a popular polka, adapted to brazen
instruments in full regimental force. Groups of well-dressed people were
scattered here and there over the greensward: the branching trees lent a
delicious shelter from the fierce rays of the summer sun; and a glimpse
that could be caught by the curious of the interior of the tent
disclosed an array of plates, dishes, and glasses that would have caused
the heart of a fasting man to dance with anticipated bliss.

“Now, then, look alive! Jump out! The horse won’t stand in this row,”
said John, a little impatiently perhaps, for Jolly Boy, in spite of the
five and twenty miles’ journey, was restless with excitement, and Will
Burton, one of Mr. Beacham’s trusted “helpers,” who had been sent on by
train to wait his master’s coming, was holding him (though with some
little difficulty) steady by the bit during the “young missus’s”
descent.

Honor made what haste she could, gathering together her full skirts to
save them as best she might from the dusty wheel, and feeling, she
scarcely knew why, a something in her husband’s tone that jarred against
her sense of what was delicate and becoming; jarred too against her own
consciousness of beauty, of being well-dressed; of being, in short, a
little woman worthy to be petted and admired. She was not cross--far
from it--as she shook out her ample drapery and took John’s sturdy arm,
while Mrs. Beacham held firm possession of the other; but, though not
the least angry with her husband, Honor was too habitually
good-tempered, and, at the moment too happy, to be _that_, she was
perhaps rather more disposed than she had been before to greet with
satisfaction any appreciating words or flattering attentions which might
chance to fall to her lot. Nor were such opportunities for the
gratification of a vanity which was more natural than harmless, likely
to be wanting. Honor’s beauty was not of the kind to be passed over in a
crowd, be that crowd ever so dense or individually preoccupied. The
exquisite colouring, delicate as it was rich, of her bright young
face--the lips slightly parted, red and dewy--and the violet eyes,
half-shy, half-laughing, made up a _tout ensemble_ that many a man
turned and turned again to look upon, as Honor Beacham flitted amongst
the throng that day, leaning on her husband’s arm.




CHAPTER XXII.

A TOUCH OF THE SPUR.


Many gentlemen, as I have just said--gentlemen, that is, by brevet and
by prescriptive right--made themselves conspicuous that day by their
open and undisguised admiration for John Beacham’s beautiful wife. Honor
was, unfortunately, precisely in the position which of all others
renders a young woman the most easy to be beset by this indelicate
description of flattery. There is something in the very name of a
“horse-breeder’s wife” which at once connects itself in the mind with
what is as “fast” and “slangy” and forward as the most fast and free and
horsey among the “fine young English ladies” of our day. Those who
chanced to know Honor personally might have proclaimed the contrary; but
somehow young men in general do not care much to assert that a beautiful
girl with whom they are acquainted has betrayed the reverse of the
proclivities above alluded to; so, for lack of a champion, those who
were not acquainted with Mrs. John Beacham judged of that young woman as
it pleased them best.

Amongst the class of “gentlemen” above alluded to--_messieurs qui
suivent les femmes_ from rule, from habit, and from inclination--the one
that stared the most at, and followed the closest on, Honor’s footsteps
was the individual with whom the reader has already made some slight
acquaintance in his character of owner of that celebrated yearling
yclept Rough Diamond.

Colonel Norcott, whose history in his native county had been for some
years “a blank,” was at this period of his life somewhere about
five-and-forty years of age. Five-and-forty, _bien sonnées_,
nevertheless he looked younger than his age, for his figure, which
(whatever else he had lost) he had been fortunate enough to keep, was
slight and juvenile; his hair, though less luxuriant than of yore, was
still thick and glossy; and his face, which, though always plain, even
to ugliness, was singularly attractive and intelligent, had stood so
well the wear and tear of years that many pronounced Fred Norcott a
better-looking man in middle-age than he had been in the days when a
greater amount of personal beauty might fairly have been expected of
him.

Frederick Norcott, an only and over-indulged son, was barely seventeen
when he commenced his career in life as a light dragoon. He possessed
great natural shrewdness, a good memory, and a rare gift of rendering
himself agreeable to those whom he desired to please. Principles he had
none. To instil any such troublesome things into his son’s youthful mind
had been deemed by Fred’s father a work of supererogation. Fred would be
well off, had good connections, and was rather a sharp fellow than
otherwise; so the country gentleman, who knew but little of the world,
and who--his own nature being both a proud and a cold one--had himself
kept clear of scrapes, sent his only son forth into “life” with the
injunctions to do nothing dishonourable, and never to make a fool of
himself.

There are some young men thus ushered into a world of trial and of
temptation, for whom the code of honour--in so many respects the
Christian code--would stand in stead of what are called higher
principles, and would keep them at least tolerably straight in the path
which they were fated to tread; but of such exceptional young men as
these Frederick Norcott did not, unfortunately for himself and his
friends, happen to be one. Cursed with the strongest passions, adoring
as well as despising women, utterly selfish, and a gambler to the
backbone, who can wonder that Frederick Norcott should very early in
life have become bankrupt in fortune, friends, and reputation,--in all,
in short, that should make existence valuable to its possessor? But for
the wars, which were consecutively so instrumental in the “keeping
going” of sundry of England’s impecunious sons and heroes, Fred Norcott
would very soon have been laid on an extremely comfortless shelf. How he
contrived to live, after his paternal inheritance had been reduced to
actual nothingness, was pretty much a secret between the Jews, his
creditors, and himself. As a soldier, however, he stood high. As
fearless before the foe as he was audacious with the fair, Fred Norcott,
as long as shots were flying, and human flesh and bones were required to
stop them, kept his head above water tolerably well. But the day of
reckoning came at last. Ships came back full instead of empty of
soldiers from the East; the last rebel Pandy was scattered to the winds;
the dead had buried their dead, and hungry creditors began to think of
gathering up the fragments that remained. For a time--why does not
appear, except for the reason that some men do possess more than others
the gift of softening hearts--Colonel Norcott’s natural enemies seemed
disposed to allow him that highly improvable item, time. Perhaps seeing
that the Colonel came under the head of that large class, namely,
“distinguished officers,” it would scarcely have _paid_, immediately
after his retirement from the service, to be hard upon him. To have
coarsely insisted upon payment--to have “taken steps” for the
“settlement” of their long-standing accounts--might have occasioned the
loss to those rapacious tradesmen of the custom of better men; so, as I
said before, they waited for a while, with what patience they could
muster, for the turning of the tide.

As is generally the case, immunity from punishment was very far from
working either reformation or improvement. The iniquities which Fred had
committed in the green tree were perpetrated by him still more
villanously in the brown. At the age of thirty-six, there were few
atrocities, chiefly under the rose, of which he had not been guilty; and
it was at that age--an age at which the wild oats are supposed to be
sown, and the new leaf lastingly turned over--that the ex-dragoon
committed the act of which “old Dub” entertained so vague a
recollection, but the consequences of which eventually drove Colonel
Fred (with all his debts upon his head, and very little money in his
pockets) to Australia.

This climax in the career of the ex-dragoon took place about a dozen
years before the opening of my story; and Colonel Norcott, after
spending ten of those years in banishment, had returned to his native
land a wiser if not a better man. Nor had he, as we already know,
returned alone; for there was a Mrs. Norcott--a colonial heiress, it was
said--who had taken pity on Fred’s poverty and loneliness, and endowed
him with her hand and fortune. At the time my story opens, two years, or
nearly so, had elapsed since Colonel Norcott--gay, agreeable, but
slightly under a cloud--made his reappearance on the stage of the London
world. How or at what period terms had been made with the creditors to
whose former leniency the prodigal owed so much, history deponeth not.
That they were satisfied with the turn affairs had taken was evidenced
by the fact that “the Colonel” roamed, with a free step and _jarret
tendre_, about his former haunts; while for the nonce--whether such a
state of things would last remained to be seen--a veil seemed by common
consent (amongst the laxest portion of Colonel Norcott’s former
acquaintances) to be thrown over his past delinquencies, and _non mi
ricordo_, save amongst the ultra strict, was as regarded his errors the
order of the day.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Who is that gentleman, John?” asked Honor, her face still flushed with
the crimson tide that a prolonged stare from Colonel Norcott’s bold
insinuating eyes had thrown into it. “I fancy I have seen him before.
Did not he come to the Paddocks one day about buying a horse?”

“A great many people do that, my dear,” responded John absently. “Came
to buy a horse, did he? And which of all these gentlemen is it that you
mean?”

“Which? O, that one! there he goes--the tall man in the light coat; you
can see him now between the trees, talking to the person that you call
Jack Winthrop.”

John Beacham, who had a moment before been intensely amused by watching
an animated game at “Aunt Sally,” turned in the direction indicated, but
at first without being able to discover the object of his wife’s
curiosity. The hand that rested on his arm positively trembled with
impatience. Honor could not account for the strange interest which she
seemed to take in that middle-aged, distinguished-looking man. To her,
Colonel Norcott, erect and soldier-like, with his grand military
bearing, and his five-and-forty years so bravely carried, seemed almost
an old man, or rather an old prince. Somebody very remarkable he was--of
that Honor had no doubt; and the fact of his having noticed _her_ did
not tend to lessen the interest that he had excited.

“O John, can’t you see him?” she said eagerly. “There, he is out of
sight now! Why _wouldn’t_ you look before? I _know_ he is somebody
great--a foreign prince, or something of that kind.”

John laughed gaily. “Why, child,” he said, “what do _you_ know about
foreign princes? Do you suppose there’s anything in the cut of their jib
different from other people’s? Why, if you want to see an article of
that sort, I’ll bring you a mustachioed fellow up to lunch one of these
days. There’s plenty of all sorts come, one way or the other, to the
Paddocks. They speak pretty good English, do most of the mounseers, or
there ain’t many words would pass between me and them. But about this
gent, Honey, that you’re so anxious to know the name of. Is that him,
coming back again, and looking this way?”

By this time the tall figure of Colonel Norcott was again in sight,
swinging his cane, and sauntering slowly towards the spot where John
Beacham, with those two very different specimens of womankind--one
leaning upon either arm--was standing. It must have been evident to any
looker-on whose attention was not otherwise engrossed that the Colonel
manifested a decided inclination to haunt the spot where that beautiful
face and _élancée_ girlish figure were to be seen and admired. Honor,
perceiving his return, _felt_ that so it was; and the shy blush rose
again to her cheek as she answered John’s question in the affirmative.

Rather to her surprise, the latter turned away abruptly, thus avoiding
the meeting with the gallant Fred which must otherwise have taken place.

“O,” he began, and Honor knew by his heightened colour that her
husband’s naturally quick temper had received a touch of the spur, “so
that’s the party, is it? Well, Honey, I won’t promise to bring _him_ up
to the house--that is, at least, unless I’m obliged to, which I don’t
think likely. Why, my dear, that’s Colonel Norcott, a man who--but never
mind; _you’ve_ nothing to do with what he is, nor I neither, excepting
that he bought Rough Diamond of Arthur Vavasour, and--well, I never
thought to care so little whether a colt of my breeding proved a winning
horse or not.”

“They were great people once in the county were the Norcotts,” put in
Mrs. Beacham. “I’ve heard old Mrs. Parsons--she that was mother to the
fly-away thing that keeps the shop at Leigh now--say, times and over,
that Madam Norcott--which she’s nothing better than Mrs. Baker now--used
to buy gownds of her that a duchess might have wored; and she could
afford it too; and it was a pity that this young man made ducks and
drakes of everything, for it was him, warn’t it, John, that brought the
family down to what it is?”

Before her son could answer, which he was about to do in the
affirmative, the well-known proverb having reference to a certain
gentleman in black who shall be nameless, was once more unsatisfactorily
illustrated by the reappearance on the scene of the spendthrift in
question. Coming this time totally unawares upon the unsuspecting trio,
it was impossible for John to evade, as he had before done, the meeting
with a man of whose character and principles he entertained the worst
possible opinion. The object of his dislike came forward with a
_dégagée_ air, and after nodding in a patronising manner to John,
stopped in the middle of the broad turf-covered walk, thus effectually
barring the passage.

“Fine day! Looked like rain this morning. Your wife, eh, Beacham? Happy
to be introduced. We’re kinder pardners now, as the Yankees say, and you
must wish me good luck, Mrs. Beacham, with Rough Diamond. Ladies have
all the luck in racing, and I shall expect you’ll remember me in your
prayers.”

“I hear the colt is looking well,” John said stiffly. “I’ve no interest
in him myself now he’s out of Mr. Vavasour’s hands;” and he was moving
on, when Colonel Norcott, stepping on one side, joined himself (walking
on Honor’s side) to the party.

“Been riding lately, Mrs. Beacham?” he said coolly. “That little mare of
yours is a pretty goer; but then, who should be well mounted if you are
not? Of course you had the pick of your husband’s stables, and there’s
nothing like them, I always say. Such luck, too, Beacham, your stock
have. By George! I expect to make a pot of money out of Rough Diamond.”

“I hope you won’t be disappointed, sir,” said John drily. “And now,”
stopping dead short, and looking resolutely at a turn in the road which
led (at right-angles) in another direction, “and now I believe that we
must wish you good-morning. I am a business man; and as I don’t often
afford myself a day’s leisure, I wish to make the most of it;” and
having so said, he bowed with grave civility to the Colonel, and drew
his womankind away.

Fred Norcott was not the kind of man to be easily repulsed. He did not
stand in the slightest awe of John. “A low fellow of a horse-breeder,
you know,” is the way he would have described the man whose watchwords
were truth and honesty, and whose palm was as pure as a sucking child’s
from bribes. “A fellow who ought to be obliged to a gentleman for
noticing him, which one wouldn’t do, you know, except for his wife. By
Jove! _such_ a pretty creature! Such eyes! and a foot--”

But there is no need to follow this unchartered libertine in his
(imagined) unseemly rhapsodies. That he did intensely admire the wife of
the man he affected to despise had been made quite sufficiently evident
during that short colloquy, not only to the object of that admiration,
but to honest John himself. The latter was not either of a quarrelsome
or a susceptible temperament. It was not in his nature to take umbrage
at any respectfully evinced appreciation of his wife’s beauty. Anything
so pretty as Honor was of course made to be looked at; but looked at,
not with eyes of _convoitise_--not with the bold, much-meaning,
purity-tainting stare with which men of the stamp of dissolute Fred
Norcott bring burning blushes to the cheeks of girlish beauty. John’s
blood had boiled within him when the colour, stirred by the bad man’s
gaze, had risen to his fair wife’s brow. He could have felled that
slight, delicate-looking libertine to the ground with one blow of his
powerful right arm, and the act would have done good, perhaps, to both
men; but John had, for the moment at least, his passions under control,
and the quondam soldier was left standing scathless upon the
greensward, and gazing vacantly at Honor’s retreating figure.

The abruptness--not to call it rudeness--with which John Beacham had
given him his _congé_ seemed to have produced very little effect in
rousing Fred Norcott’s indignation. The impression that the sight of
Honor had made upon him was far too powerful for any other emotion
either to lessen or to remove it. The fact was that in the Celtic beauty
he had traced, or fancied he could trace, one of those extraordinary
resemblances which sometimes, in our walk through life--looking back, it
may be, along the “wondrous track of dreams”--startle us into
retrospective thought.

“How like! My G--d! how like!” he said to himself. “The same fair hair,
and long dark eyelashes. The same--”

“I beg your pardon, Colonel Norcott; but I believe you are thinking of
Mrs. John Beacham?” and a middle-aged woman, neatly but plainly dressed,
who had approached unperceived (so constant was the hum of voices, and
so soft and thick the turf beneath her tread), dropped a curtsey to the
gentleman, and begged to say that her name was Bridget Bainbridge.

As is the frequent case with intriguing persons, Colonel Norcott’s first
idea, when he chanced to find himself accosted by a stranger, was, that
he was about to be imposed upon; he therefore--albeit a little taken
aback by the sound of a name which he had not heard for many a bygone
year--commenced an immediate scrutiny of the woman’s features, in order
the better to secure himself against the evil of being “done.”
Apparently the investigation was corroborative, for after a moment or
two he said in a hurried whisper:

“It is a long time since we met, and you have chosen rather a public
place in which to make yourself known. If you have anything to say, go
in that direction,” and he pointed to a narrow pathway, leading to a
dense shrubbery of evergreens. “Go,” he continued authoratively; “and I
will join you in a few moments.”

The woman who had called herself Bridget Bainbridge seemed about to
speak, then stopped, hesitated a little, as if unable to make up her
mind as to the best course to be pursued, and finally decided on
following the Colonel’s directions. The latter, after waiting--with a
strange look of perplexity in his face--for a few brief moments, turned
away in an opposite direction, but in one which, for he knew the “lay”
of the Danescourt grounds well, would conduct him eventually to the
place where Mrs. Bainbridge was waiting for his coming. His step was far
slower now, and infinitely less assured, than when he had advanced with
that _air conquérant_ of his to damage with a word and look the peace of
mind of that bright rustic beauty. There was evidence of thought in his
lowered head, and of a nameless anxiety in his knitted brow. _Something_
had tamed his spirits since he had caught sight of that quiet-looking
middle-aged female, and as he approached the place where she was waiting
for him, the pulsations of his heart grew quicker, and large beads of
sweat stood out upon his forehead.


                            END OF VOL. I.


                                LONDON:
            ROBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKS,
                          PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.


Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

spent in the secluson=> spent in the seclusion {pg 18}

succesfully combated=> successfully combated {pg 101}

gossipped about=> gossiped about {pg 184}

change your gownd afore=> change your gown afore {pg 201}

She was girl=> She was a girl {pg 284}







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